So much for that idea that advanced weapons somehow stop the class
struggle. Take special note of the part of this article about people
fighting back with bows and arrows.
Protests continue in Myanmar in face of military’s deadly attacks
https://themilitant.com/2021/04/10/69514/
BY SETH GALINSKY
Vol. 85/No. 15
April 19, 2021
April 1 protest against military coup in Tant Se, in Myanmar’s Sagaing
Region, by workers, farmers, Buddhist monks, students from surrounding
towns and villages. Region has history of farmers fight for land, as
well as Chin and other ethnic minorities’ battles for equal rights.
KO SAT
April 1 protest against military coup in Tant Se, in Myanmar’s Sagaing
Region, by workers, farmers, Buddhist monks, students from surrounding
towns and villages. Region has history of farmers fight for land, as
well as Chin and other ethnic minorities’ battles for equal rights.
The junta in Myanmar has been unable to quell daily protest marches,
candlelight vigils and strikes opposing the Feb. 1 military coup despite
killing hundreds of protesters and jailing thousands.
The police pulled over several public transit buses for no reason April
2 in Yangon’s North Okkalapa Township, a working-class stronghold of
opposition to the military regime. “They told the passengers to get off
and kneel down. They beat not only the passengers but also the drivers,”
a witness told Irrawaddy, a news site that backs the Civil Disobedience
Movement.
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners said April 7 that the
death toll stands at 598, most killed when the police and army units
fired on unarmed demonstrators.
The junta, led by Gen. Min Aung Hliang, seized power after the National
League for Democracy, a capitalist party led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won
the November elections in a landslide. Suu Kyi had shared power with the
military command since the party first won an overwhelming majority in
the 2015 elections. Under the 2008 constitution, the high command
automatically controls 25% of the seats in the parliament, and key
ministries.
As the military unleashes further repression, working people and youth
have been adjusting their tactics to keep up pressure on the regime
while minimizing their own losses.
In Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city and the one that has suffered the
brunt of the repression, smaller groups — including some led by members
of the garment workers union — are carrying out short actions that
disperse before the police or army units have time to attack.
Early in the morning April 6, protesters sprayed messages in red paint
all over Yangon. “The blood has not dried,” read one message. Another
appealed to soldiers: “Don’t kill people just for a small salary as low
as the cost of dog food.”
The junta has relied on the police and elite army units to repress the
peaceful protests and strikes by workers. But the bulk of the soldiers
are from rural farm areas, as well as unemployed youth from the cities.
Unequal combat
Daily protests, some in the thousands, and strikes that have involved
tens of thousands of workers over the past two months, continue.
Workers, farmers and youth in at least a dozen small towns and villages
have stood up to police and military assaults with bows and arrows and
hunting rifles.
In Kalay city, in a majority Chin ethnic area in northern Myanmar, young
people armed with rifles and homemade weapons fought for hours March 28
with soldiers from an army unit and police who were using machine guns
and hand grenades.
Later in the week, seven plainclothes police captured by the protesters
were released in exchange for nine residents detained for violating the
evening curfew imposed by the junta. Unlike the way the junta treats
protesters, “We treated them [the police] well. There were no beatings,”
a protester told Myanmar Now.
History of ethnic divisions
Myanmar’s capitalist rulers have relied on the military to wage a series
of wars with dozens of armed groups in mountainous border areas where
ethnic minorities make up the majority of the population. By 2013 the
government had negotiated de facto, if uneasy, cease-fires with most of
them.
These conflicts originate in the divide-and-rule strategy of the British
colonial regime. Their continuation is in part because no revolutionary
working-class leadership emerged from the hard-fought battles that
brought colonial rule to an end. The British rulers had excluded the
Bamar majority from the colonial army, instead recruiting from the
Karen, Kachin and Chin ethnic minorities. For government positions, it
brought in officials from India.
After gaining independence in 1948, the new government reversed the
discrimination against the Bamar, but at the expense of the ethnic
minorities.
More than a third of the population is made up of 135 ethnic minorities
recognized by the government.
The largest of these are the Shan with 9%, Karen 7%, Rakhine 4% and
ethnic Chinese with 3%. The government does not recognize Rohingya, a
Muslim minority in the west, as an ethnic minority. In 2017 the military
carried out deadly assaults on Rohingya, forcing 700,000 to flee to
neighboring Bangladesh. Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy defended
the repression.
The junta wants to keep the ethnic armies from bolstering the movement
against the coup. At the end of March it announced a unilateral
cease-fire to run through the end of April.
The United Wa State Army, based on the Wa people — one of the smaller
ethnic groups — has not criticized the coup. But it is the largest
standing ethnic army, with 25,000 soldiers, and surface-to-air missiles
and heavy artillery provided by Beijing. It is not willing to jeopardize
its long-standing accommodation with the Myanmar military high command
that accepts its control over a large region along the Chinese border.
A dozen other armed groups have expressed their solidarity with the
nationwide protests against the military junta.
Both the Kachin Independence Army and the Karen National Union have
clashed with the Myanmar military since the coup. The Karen National
Union noted in a March 30 statement that despite a 2013 cease-fire
agreement, “the Burmese military has been expanding its military
presence in several Karen territories” for years.
Some 12,000 Karen people fled their homes in the Papun and Nyaunglebin
districts after the junta carried out airstrikes March 27-31, killing 14
villagers.
Demonstrations in solidarity with those fighting military rule in
Myanmar took place across the U.S. March 28 and April 3. More actions
are planned.
James Khyne in Houston contributed to this article.
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Carl Sagan “It seems to me what is called for is an exquisite balance
between two conflicting needs: the most skeptical scrutiny of all
hypotheses that are served up to us and at the same time a great
openness to new ideas. Obviously those two modes of thought are in some
tension. But if you are able to exercise only one of these modes,
whichever one it is, you’re in deep trouble. If you are only skeptical,
then no new ideas make it through to you. You never learn anything new.
You become a crotchety old person convinced that nonsense is ruling the
world. (There is, of course, much data to support you.) But every now
and then, maybe once in a hundred cases, a new idea turns out to be on
the mark, valid and wonderful. If you are too much in the habit of being
skeptical about everything, you are going to miss or resent it, and
either way you will be standing in the way of understanding and
progress. On the other hand, if you are open to the point of gullibility
and have not an ounce of skeptical sense in you, then you cannot
distinguish the useful as from the worthless ones.” ― Carl Sagan