The issue of rising state brutality in the Asian theatre

The world has just been given a grim reminder of the mind-numbing costs of legitimate political dissent against state repression in Myanmar. The country’s military rulers have had no qualms about executing four pro-democracy activists, including well known political activist Kyaw Min Yu and former legislator Pho Zayar Thaw. Besides being made to witness absolute state intolerance of political dissent, the Myanmarese people are being placed on notice that they would need to be fully subservient to the ruling junta or pay the supreme price.

Thus, is the world being provided a fresh example of the inhumanity that usually characterizes repressive military rule. Democracies of questionable merits, such as Sri Lanka, need to sit up fully and take notice of these repressive tendencies in governance in the Asian region. Just a few days back, the Ranil Wickremesinghe regime went so far as to use brute force in an effort to break-up the months-long people’s protests against essentially mounting economic hardships, centred on Galle Face in Colombo.

This was an extreme step to take against legitimate civilian dissent, which is at the core of democracy. The regime needs to be highly mindful of its handling of civilian dissent because the exercise of brute force against unarmed and peacefully protesting civilians could degenerate into fascistic intolerance of oppositional opinion.

May Sri Lanka’s rulers be educated on the point, since they have begun to use the term ‘fascism’ somewhat liberally, that literally bludgeoning oppositional forces, including protesting civilians, into observing state dictates that are seen as lacking in legitimacy, is tantamount to taking the country on a fascistic path. Among other things, the term should not be bandied around to justify state repression.

The executions in Myanmar are seen by commentators as being part of broader repressive political trends in the Southeast and South Asian regions. Amnesty International, for instance, while focusing on Myanmar said, among other things, that Southeast Asia is currently marked by ‘escalating repression, constraints on civil society and intolerance for political dissent.’

These observations are substantiated by Afghanistan’s descent into political and economic chaos and Sri Lanka’s current collapse into economic ruin and rampant political instability, to take just two examples from the South Asian region. Meanwhile, former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan is on record that his country is ‘not far from’ its ‘Sri Lanka moment.’

Contemporary Myanmar is a text book example of how state repression coming in the wake of popular calls for democratic empowerment, could lead to runaway internal strife and armed revolt on the part of particularly aggrieved, youthful sections. The latter trend grew in strength subsequent to the military take-over of the country’s administration in February last year. Youths in their hundreds gave up their studies, we are told, and headed for the ‘bush’, where they are currently locked in a guerrilla war with the country’s military.

As the recent executions prove, the Myanmar junta’s answer to the pro-democracy revolt is the application increasing brute repression. Reports indicate that since the coup, more than 1,800 people have been killed in Myanmar, while more than 10,000 have been detained.

As Asian history has proved, reactions of this kind only lead to greater and bloodier internal strife; a lesson that should not be lost on Sri Lanka, as it struggles to manage a new and intensified round of civilian unrest. All in all, the country cannot opt for ‘the Peace of the Grave Yard’; which option it availed of in the late eighties and at the end of the LTTE revolt in 2009.

What is called for in Myanmar is decisive and stepped-up action on the part of the international community to bring about positive political change within the country that would benefit its people. In this effort, the West and ASEAN would need to work unitedly and prove a formidable bulwark against powers, such as China and Russia, which are bound to have a commonality of interests with the Myanmarese junta and seek to protect the latter from what are seen as inimical external pressures. More particularly, the UN would need to intervene strongly and decisively on the side of the Myanmarese people.

State coercion would prove extremely counter-productive in the face of questions that are amenable to only political solutions and this realization, one hopes, would dawn on Myanmar, Sri Lanka and other countries that are up against popular revolts that are essentially sourced by economic issues. Such realizations are of the first importance because economic deprivations are likely to increasingly fuel political and social tensions worldwide in the months to come.

The UN has all the thought-provoking statistics in this connection. In mid-June the UN went on record as having said that in just two years, the number of severely food insecure people the world over had doubled to 276 million from 135 million, before the Covid pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It need hardly be said that global food deprivation and insecurity would be aggravating greatly currently with the invasion showing no signs of easing. Further, it is revealed that ‘almost 21 million children are one step away from starvation and almost 811 million go to bed hungry each night because they do not get enough food.’

It is plain to see that that scores of countries in the global South could very well be on the threshold of experiencing their Sri Lankan and perhaps Myanmar ‘moments’. The ‘bleeding statistics’ provided above should enable the analyst to place the popular revolts in the countries mentioned in their correct historical perspective. It is highly unlikely that the ruling strata of Myanmar or Sri Lanka could be counted on to act in the best interests of their people. The situation is desperate in Myanmar and we could be heading in the direction of a major political, social and economic convulsion of the same kind in Sri Lanka.

The hope of this columnist is that he would be proved wrong on this score. Ideally, wise counsel must prevail and the first steps to broad-based democratic governance, coupled with economic and social justice, should be taken in Sri Lanka before long. Meanwhile, the democratic world needs to get its act together and pressurize the Myanmar junta into bringing about internal political change that would be in the best interest of the people.