Myanmar, the incorrigible nation that it has become, is back in the news for all the wrong reasons. On Monday, Myanmar's military chief Min Aung Hlaing, known more for the genocides of the country's Rohingya Muslims and other minorities than for his political skills, let alone his nation-building skills, seized power through a coup. Bad habits die very hard in Myanmar.
Only five years ago, the generals agreed to share power, though reluctantly and under conditions favourable to the men in fatigues, with the civilian government led by de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Only in November, she had won a landslide victory — 83 per cent of the seats, according to The Economist— a win that has displeased the military chief.
Even that frail five-year-long arrangement disappeared on Monday when Suu Kyi and key members of her cabinet were imprisoned. The army, or Tatmadaw to the locals, thinks it can keep Myanmar in the dark ages.
The world must not allow Myanmar to regress so for at least three reasons. Firstly, so isolated, the Tatmadaw will go on a genocide rampage. Even with Suu Kyi as de facto leader of a civilian government, the Tatmadaw saw it fit to massacre the Rohingya and other minorities. Evidence gathered by the United Nations and others show villages being burned, most of them belonging to the Rohingya. Elsewhere, the Tatmadaw massacres them only to be buried in difficult to identify mass graves. Shockingly, Suu Kyi defended the generals at home and abroad, saying there was no genocide to speak of.
She went as far as The Hague to defend the indefensible generals at the International Court of Justice. The halo that came with her Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 disappeared for defence such as this. So did her other international accolades bestowed on her by a global community very much in awe of her.
Rightly, it must be said. Power overpowers some people thus. Be that as it may, the generals have no right to detain elected lawmakers. The world must make it difficult for the Tatmadaw to hold them captive any longer. In the meanwhile, international legal institutions, such as the International Criminal Court, must hasten to bring the Tatmadaw war criminals to justice before more die at the hands of Aung Hlaing.
Secondly, repression and persecution at home threatens peace and security of Myanmar's neighbours. Her Southeast Asian neighbours, Bangladesh and distant countries, are made to foot the bill of Tatmadaw's sins. Of this, the burden on densely-populated Bangladesh has been the hardest.
Home to more than a million Rohingya refugees, Myanmar's closest neighbour to the west is finding it hard to provide space and money to house the refugees. The Tatmadaw must know this: to seek to stem the flow of refugees into Myanmar's neighbouring territories isn't an interference in the internal affairs of the country.
So isn't the attempt to stop Myanmar from committing war crimes. Nations that are compelled to host and heal its people have every right to tell the Tatmadaw what to do and what not to do.
Call it the price for picking up the tab of the Tatmadaw. Finally, the people of Myanmar, like people everywhere else, want to live liveable lives. The Tatmadaw must not stand in the way.
Myanmar has lost more than 50 years of progress under the Tatmadaw's reign of terror. One more year is one too many.