Burma: can the balance of power be reversed in favor of the junta's opponents?

Audio 02:51

Security forces form a line to prevent anti-coup protesters from advancing near the United States Embassy in Yangon, Myanmar on Monday, February 22, 2021. © AP Photos

By: Cyril Payen

2 min

As the first anniversary of the military coup in Burma approaches, the junta maintains its pressure on a martyred population.

Despite a repressive campaign of rare violence, civil resistance continues.

Is it possible that the balance of power turns to the advantage of pro-democratic movements?

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It is certain that the putschist general Min Aung Hlaing had foreseen everything, a few weeks before the coup of February 1.

Except that the Burmese street, almost a year later, continues to resist him, him and the half a million soldiers of the Tatmadaw, the Burmese army and its sophisticated weapons abundantly supplied by Moscow and Beijing.

1,400 dead, nearly 10,000 political prisoners, thousands of displaced people including some of the youth of the big cities were not enough to extinguish the flame of the pro-democratic Burmese resistance which, on the contrary, seems to be winning. in strength and radicality.

The PDF, the Popular Defense Force, the armed wing of the shadow government created last May by parliamentarians who went underground, is stepping up attacks against all the representatives of the dictatorship: soldiers and their families, police officers, officials, informants are often shot in the middle of the street when garrisons, banks and ministries are targets of attacks. 

Burma accounts for a third of ethnic minorities, many of them engaged in insurgency movements 

On the ethnic front, the historical Karen, Karennis, Shans, Kachins or Chin guerrillas are opposing the junta from East to West. This was not, again, not foreseen in the scenario of the takeover of the military. Especially since in the jungle of the Thai border, an embryonic coalition combining thousands of young Burmese dissidents with ethnic guerrillas is emerging. The extreme violence of the dry season offensive which has just started in these regions speaks volumes about the nervousness of the putschist generals. The appalling, charred deaths of 35 civilians - 

 - in a punitive expedition in the Karenni State, on Christmas Day, moreover caused a stir in part of the international opinion.

The United Nations, the United States and the European Union are calling for stronger sanctions and an arms embargo, is that enough?  

Burma has entered a spiral of civil war which is undoubtedly a path of no return.

The declarations of principle of the international community and the sanctions weigh little in the face of the intransigence of the junta, but also in the face of the determination of a Burmese population which refuses to be robbed of one of its first democratic experiences since the independence 70 years ago.

The first signs of annoyance of the Chinese godfather at the exactions of the Burmese military, but also his inability to crush dissent, could, who knows, also weigh on the future of a dictatorship increasingly under attack.  

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• Burma

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