Myanmar in turmoil after 100 days of military rule
Many cities, towns and even neighborhoods had already formed local defence groups which in theory will now become part of the People’s Defence Force. Aside from being morale boosters, these actions serve a strategic purpose by endorsing a federal style of government, which has been sought for decades by the country’s ethnic minorities to give them autonomous powers in the border areas where they predominate.
Promoting federalism, in which the center shares power with the regions, aligns the interests of the anti-military pro-democracy movement with the goals of the ethnic minorities. In theory, this could add a real military component to a movement whose armaments are generally no deadlier than Molotov cocktails and air rifles – though homemade bombs have been added to its arsenals in recent weeks. In practice, at least for the time being, the guerrilla armies of the Kachin in the north and the Karen in the east will fight as they always have, to protect their own territory. They can give military training to the thousands of activists that are claimed to have fled the cities to their zones, but are still overmatched by the government’s forces. But on their home ground they hold an advantage against what their populations consider an occupying army. That may be enough. “The only thing that the military is really threatened by is when all of these disparate voices and communities around the country actually start working against it, not as a unified monolith, but all working against the military’s interests,” said the analyst, Mathieson. ”And I think that’s the best that we can hope for moving forward, that the people recognise that all efforts have to go against the military. And if that means fighting up in the hills and doing peaceful protests and other forms of striking back against the military in the towns and the cities, then so be it.”Mathieson said he's seen no signs the junta was willing to negotiate or concede anything. The Tatmadaw is “remarkably resilient. And they recognise that this is an almost existential threat to their survival."Three senior journalists working for a news agency in Myanmar who fled after the military government ordered its operations to stop have been arrested by police in northern Thailand, their editor said Monday., an online and broadcast news agency, its executive director and chief editor, Aye Chan Naing, said in an email. Burma is the former name for Myanmar and is still used by some opponents of military rule. He said the three, along with two activists, whom he did not identify, were arrested Sunday in Chiang Mai during a random search by police.
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