Burma

It may be an impossible task to restore Aung San Suu Kyi’s reputation, but Burma’s generals have made a sterling effort this week, after they sentenced her to at least two years in jail. This time last year Suu Kyi, a former Nobel peace prize winner, was a fallen icon. Her lack of sympathy and concern for the plight of Rohingyas in her country and, worse, her defence of the army’s brutal repression and massacres of them (she even appeared on the army’s behalf at the International Court of Justice in the Hague) had disillusioned her admirers. Many of the peace awards she received were revoked, including the European Parliament’s

Deep in south-east Asia sits a country where 54 million people are living a total nightmare. A nation that, benighted for decades, now faces a humanitarian catastrophe. Myanmar – otherwise known as Burma – has been hit by a quadruple whammy: a military coup, a half-century long civil war reignited with a vengeance, economic collapse and coronavirus. It faces a dire humanitarian emergency fuelled by coup, collapse, civil war and Covid. Since the coup on 1 February, over 900 people have been killed by the army and over 5,000 jailed. Hundreds of thousands have been displaced after the military unleashed an aerial bombardment on ethnic minorities on a scale not

For more than two months now Myanmar has been convulsed by a burgeoning civil war. The confrontation between the country’s military and large parts of the country has little prospect of an early resolution unless China and Russia withdraw their support for the junta, which jettisoned a five-year power-sharing arrangement with Aung San Suu Kyi’s party. The country’s armed forces evicted the National League for Democracy from office in February but have failed to consolidate the coup d’etat. The younger generation of Myanmarese have tasted a decade of democracy and freedom — they show little sign of buckling. The men in uniform ruled oppressively from 1962 for nearly half a

In what could transpire to be a significant development, Buddhist monks joined tens of thousands of anti-coup protesters in the Burmese capital of Rangoon on Wednesday. This is the sixth continuous day of mass demonstrations since the military seized control. In a country where over 80 per cent of the population are Buddhists – and devoutly so – men of the cloth are influential. In fact, saffron-robed monks taking to the streets in 2007 paved the way for an end to 49 years of military rule in Burma in 2011. Along with China, they are key to restoring democracy in the south-east Asian state. On 1 February Burmese generals again

Was China involved in the coup in Myanmar? It seems unlikely, but that does not mean Beijing is blameless. As satisfying as it might be to point the finger at an omnipotent and scheming superpower, the reality is rather more complicated. After all, for all the shenanigans associated with China’s wolf-warrior diplomacy, Beijing is not as reckless or revisionist in its ambitions as it was back in the mid-to-late-60s.  Back then, amidst the chaos of the cultural revolution, Mao set about spreading his revolutionary thought abroad. Myanmar was firmly in his sights. In Southeast Asia, Beijing supplied communist guerrillas with money, weapons and training in an effort to instigate civil wars. In

In 1962 the Myanmar military staged a coup d’etat. Their iron-fisted rule lasted 49 years. On Monday, after a nine-year interlude when they remained covertly in control, they have officially and overtly retaken power. Min Aung Hlaing, who has been commander-in-chief of the armed forces since 2011, is now directly at the helm of a renewed dictatorship. Prime Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s President Win Myint and numerous others of the ruling National League for Democracy party are under arrest. The military television station announced there will be a one year state of emergency. Ostensibly fresh elections will be organised. But given their track record, the word of

The new episode of Holy Smoke is about the persecution of Christians. That’s a familiar concept, even if we don’t read much about it in the media. But here’s what it means in 2019: The rape, murder and dismemberment of pregnant Christian women in Nigeria by Islamist thugs. The use of face-recognition technology by the Chinese government to monitor, control and, where it deems necessary, eradicate Christian worship by demolishing thousands of churches The evisceration of ancient Christian communities in the lands of the Bible. The relentless torture of Christians in North Korea. The burning of Christian villages by Hindu nationalists in India, and vicious attacks on Christians in Sri Lanka

With all the wrath of a lover slighted, the Left has turned on Aung San Suu Kyi. On Friday, Jeremy Hardy, Marxism’s comedy mouthpiece, lambasted her as a ‘racist, vain narcissist’, while a petulant George Monbiot demanded that the woman be stripped of her Nobel peace prize. ‘To Aung San Suu Kyi we entrusted our hopes,’ he complained in a column last week, lamenting that he and his activist friends now feel ‘cruelly betrayed’. The heart bleeds. How things have changed. Until recently, Suu was an icon of human rights, enthroned in the pantheon with Mandela, Gandhi and the Dalai Lama. Now, if the bien pensant are to be believed, she’s a