Sometimes I really struggle to understand peoples actions and sadly another incident in Myanmar really has left me confused about what humanity is doing right now. Under the guise of searching for weapons armed soldier went into a village in the Ayeyarwady river delta region about a 150 km northwest of the main city of Yangon. During the search crashes broke out as the villagers really did not have "weapons" what they had and used to fight back were crossbows and possibly catapults. Now I am not under estimating what either a crossbow or a catapult could do to someone however when you have legitimist fire breathing weapons in guns and jets to bomb places really was the end result of 20 people killed and countless more injured necessary. No and it never will be. It isn't even a David vs Goliath comparison its really unarmed people against machine guns.
Sadly it appears that the international efforts to diplomatically end the coup and armed uprisings have completely missed the point. An envoy from The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) arrived in the country and only met with the military leader of the junta leaving the opposition completely out of the loop. This has led to both opposition leaders and ordinary citizens saying that they have no faith in ASEAN to do anything to help them. With this now publicly getting out even the Biden Administration has come out and said that the situation is only getting worse as the UN, US, and China put the ASEAN in charge of negotiating some sort of peace. Something important and worth keeping an eye on is that Singapore a key investor in Myanmar has expressed their outrage at how the junta is dragging it feet in the creation of a special envoy to try and calm the tensions.
The envoy's that have met with the junta have failed in getting anything that the previous 5 point ASEAN plan had. Violence has continued to increase and if the numbers are true about the 20 individuals killed by the government that would lead to that incident being one of the deadliest days in months. The junta has also refused to let any of the political prisoners free and next week the trial of Suu Kyi will start. This trial according to law which the judge has agreed with has to be completed by July 26th.
One of the few positives things I have been able to find actually involves the National Unity Government and possibly the group that the military's coup idea came from, the Rohingya. The Rohingya are a Muslim minority that the military in 2017 launched a genocidal military campaign against and really continued to launch operations against up until the coup. Rohingya are not permitted to become citizens under an 1982 law and the National Unity Government is reaching out to them with the promise to not only scrap the law and get them citizenship in the country they are born in but also justice against the military actors involved. This would be one of the last if not the last minority group that has not already joined the National Unity Government.
The National Unity Government has appeared to have done a really good job when it comes to creating its defense force which is fighting alongside the much older armed militia's. Recently they have launched attacks on two different police stations successfully which could lead to much bigger joint exercises being undertaken. A new thing I have been finding in more and more articles to is how makeshift factories are now manufacturing bolt action rifles. While these guns are not perfect and sometimes do not even fire but this shows the evolving nature of this. Rather then trying to import weapons from another country or via an arms broker people are literally building them themselves. However good or bad these weapons are does not really matter as it is not the point. When attacks have been launched with these weapons the military has returned fire not with small arms but with heavy weapons and artillery. So far though it has not been able to gain control of the country and even in areas that it has "control" streets are empty and the cities are paralyzed so nothing is even going on besides more protests.
Eventually this stalemate will be broken however I have no idea who it will come from. Will a country like India, who boarders Myanmar, team up with Thailand, another boarder country, to arm the opposition groups? Will they try that before possibly taking it a step further and put their militaries along the boarder to force the military to the table or face destruction? Only time will tell but sadly the junta does not seem to mind and rather will just continue to attack its own people which is a way that almost never works.
