🇲🇲 The failed 'peace' offer

Hello friends!

An update on Myanmar for us all here today. I wonder if next week’s Asean summit in Vientiane will be juicier than usual given the presence of a Myanmar representative, so I’ll be keeping an eye out on that. Elsewhere, the ‘peace’ offer that floundered and the long-planned census has launched and is going about as well as expected.

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See you next week,

Erin Cook

The peace offer that never really was

Come sit down and let’s hatch out peace. That was the surprise message from the junta to opposition forces last week urging all parties to ditch the “terrorist way.” 

“Ethnic armed organizations and PDF [People’s Defence Force] terrorists fighting against the State are invited to contact the State to resolve the political issues through party politics or electoral processes in order to be able to join hands with the people to emphasize durable peace and development by discarding the armed terrorist way,” the military’s State Administration Council said (more on this below) in a statement in the state-run Global New Light of Myanmar on Friday, as reported by Al Jazeera.

As you may have guessed, nobody was interested. The call was immediately and forcibly rejected by all parties. “They are hanging goat’s heads but selling dog meat,” Soe Thu Ya Zaw, commander of the Mandalay People’s Defense Forces, wrote in a beautiful turn of phrase to Facebook, as per BBC. This story here brings together a bunch of responses from across the country.  

The Irrawaddy opinion pages dug into what the junta was actually offering and why. The junta claimed the coup is constitutional, using that old electoral interference trope against the NLD, that elections are impossible at this stage due to violence and conflict across the country and that groups need to lay down arms and work towards a political end, preferably through the electoral system. The Irrawaddy also notes the invitation wasn’t made by the SAC itself, but rather its information team, the editorial reads, ‘which raises questions about its sincerity.’ 

I love the Irrawaddy’s heavy swinging in opinion pages and this piece may be peak form. It lays out, in pure outrage, the many stupid contradictions and falsehoods upon which this ‘peace’ request is built. The junta is simply not to be trusted. Just hours after the call was made, the military bombed Lashio, in northern Shan State, the AFP reports here (via the Straits Times). 

What counts in the count?

The military’s census plan has kicked off with a literal bang. On Monday, a day before it was to officially begin, two bombs at Yangon administrative offices injured 11 people. Urban resistance group Mission K claimed the bombs and told Radio Free Asia on Tuesday that “this operation was aimed at the junta administration's collaborators in conducting its illegal census.” RFA notes it’s been unable to confirm Mission K’s claims. 

The census is planned to conclude on Oct. 15 with an estimated 13 million households — 56 million people — to be accounted for. The junta has long talked about getting this danged census done, saying it’s a necessity before any sort of elections can be planned, but it is telling that it wasn’t delayed at all in the wake of the devastating Typhoon Yagi which smashed the country last month.

It officially launched Tuesday, Oct 1, but Myanmar Now reports resident of Pyin Oo Lwin were called on by authorities on Monday. Similarly, residents in Mandalay told the outlet they too had been surveyed. While the census team arrived in civilian vehicles, one unidentified resident said it ‘resembled a military operation.’ 

“They closed off a boarding house where I was staying and called on people from each room, one by one, to collect their information. Two soldiers were guarding the door, with their weapons at the ready, to prevent anyone from escaping,” he said. “The soldiers were just guards. The rest were women from immigration and a hundred-household administrator who called on people one by one to interview them.” 

The resident told Myanmar Now that it was very intimidating. While he was questioned only by one survey taker, there were around 10 people monitoring the interaction. 

The Pyin Oo Lwin man’s experience underscores much of the fear surrounding the entire census process itself. While it’s ostensibly to prepare the country for elections, it’s widely seen as a move to ‘flush out dissidents,’ writes expert Mary Callahan for this piece in Frontier Myanmar. 

Junta authorities ‘have never been so out of touch, reckless and perverse’ as they are now, she writes. That the survey takers — largely women who work in state-schools and have no option but to participate — ask an unwieldy 68 questions of each subject, that is hardly preparation for a voter list. ‘Essentially, it is a counterinsurgency operation, aimed in part at terrorising the population but mostly at flushing out armed opposition fighters,’ Callahan writes.

Households with connections to the Civil Disobedience Movement and other resistance groups, or who have family members living and working abroad, are especially at risk. Because of this, those groups and the National Unity Government have called for a boycott of the entire proceeding. For families this is an impossible decision, says Callahan. To not participate could see jail time under the junta but to participate could be seen as collaboration and put those households at risk for retaliation from anti-junta forces. 

The whole piece is primed with fascinating, essential information and ought to be read in full. 

Asean ahead

The junta wants a seat at the table at next week’s Asean summit in Laos, Nikkei Asia reports. Aung Kyaw Moe, permanent secretary of the Foreign Ministry, will be making the trip to Vientiane after attending the foreign ministers meet back in July. Asean has limited Myanmar’s participation since the Feb. 2021 coup to “non-political” representatives only and the SAC has skipped all major meetings since in protest, Nikkei notes. This appearance from Aung Kyaw Moe will be Myanmar’s first at the full-on big summit since then. 

Like the census, I think it’s important to note that this comes right after Typhoon Yagi. Myanmar was very badly hit and regional response was led by the Asean disaster relief office. 

Reading list:

Over 5,000 civilians killed since Myanmar military coup — UN News

At least 5,350 civilians have been killed, and more than 3.3 million displaced, since the military seized power on 1 February 2021, and over half the population is living below the poverty line mainly due to violence perpetrated by the national armed forces.

Furthermore, nearly 27,400 people have been arrested, and numbers have been rising since the implementation of mandatory conscription this past February.

(Click through for the full report published last month)

12 Myanmar political prisoners died from inadequate medical care in 2024: report — Myanmar Now

At least 12 political prisoners have died in Myanmar between January and September 2024 due to prison authorities’ failure to provide adequate medical treatment, according to report released Tuesday by a prisoners’ rights monitoring group. 

Half of the deceased prisoners died after sustaining injuries during interrogation and subsequently being denied care that might have prevented their deaths, the report by the Political Prisoners Network-Myanmar (PPNM) claimed. 

Japan's downgrade of Myanmar ties casts shadow over businesses — Nikkei Asia

Japan will not be replacing its ambassador to Myanmar after he returned home Friday, a downgrade in bilateral ties that could affect Japanese businesses operating in the country.

Ichiro Maruyama was appointed ambassador to Myanmar in 2018, long before the military takeover of 2021. With his departure, Shogo Yoshitake, who was the second-ranked diplomat at the embassy in Yangon, becomes Japan's charge d'affaires ad interim in the country.

Buddhist division and polarisation in Myanmar’s revolutionary situation — New Mandala

Not surprisingly, revolutionary visions pose serious threats to institutionalised religion, such as the Sangha—the monastic order—in Myanmar. From a Buddhist–normative point of view, the question inevitably arises as to what extent a revolution constitutes a threat to the sasana (Buddhism). How do Myanmar’s nearly 600,000 monks and nuns relate to the groundbreaking work at stake? Do they see the revolution as a threat to Buddhism? Or do they see the military as a threat to Buddhism?