Five Years of Military Terror in Myanmar: A Call for Radical Rethink
Five years have passed since Senior-General Min Aung Hlaing seized power in Myanmar, plunging the nation into its most devastating period of violence since the 1988 democracy uprising. The military junta has demonstrated unequivocally that it harbours no interest in political transition, instead pursuing a relentless campaign of annihilation against its own people.
Unprecedented Levels of Civilian Violence
According to the authoritative Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), Myanmar witnessed nearly 14,000 fatalities last year alone, making it the most violent conflict among the fifty conflicts tracked globally. The junta has dramatically escalated its aerial warfare, with drone strikes, paramotor attacks, and gyrocopter assaults increasing by approximately thirty percent compared to 2024 figures.
Conscription-related civilian abductions have surged by twenty-six percent, while Myanmar remains one of the few nations continuing to deploy internationally-banned cluster munitions and antipersonnel landmines with devastating consequences for civilian populations.
A Catalogue of State-Sponsored Atrocities
The military regime has perpetrated a horrifying series of massacres that have entered the annals of modern atrocities. The Pazigyi Massacre of April 2023 stands as the deadliest single incident since the coup, claiming at least 165 villagers' lives. In October 2022, the Hpakant Massacre saw airstrikes target an outdoor concert, killing eighty civilians.
Most recently, on International Human Rights Day last December, military jets struck the general hospital in Mrauk-U town, killing at least thirty-three people in the deadliest recorded attack on a healthcare facility since the coup began.
Military Weakness Breeding Increased Brutality
These barbarities stem from military weakness rather than strength. In October 2023, Operation 1027 saw a powerful alliance of ethnic armies capture dozens of towns across northern regions and the Mandalay area, along with substantial territories in western Myanmar. The Arakan Army (AA) transformed from a regional force into a key national resistance actor, dislodging junta forces from most of Rakhine State and adjacent regions while securing Myanmar's entire border with Bangladesh.
The AA's territorial gains have disrupted junta control around crucial Chinese infrastructure projects, including a planned deep-sea port on the Bay of Bengal and vital oil and gas pipelines connecting southern China to the Indian Ocean. Faced with losing control over more than half the country, the military has responded by intensifying its aerial bombardment campaign, directly leading to the recent massacres.
The Spectacular Failure of Sham Elections
Under significant Chinese pressure, the junta attempted to bolster its legitimacy through general elections that backfired spectacularly. Most credible political parties were banned, including Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, which achieved a landslide victory in the 2020 elections. Non-aligned politicians faced imprisonment, torture, and draconian legal prosecution for criticising the electoral process.
Voter turnout in areas where voting occurred fell well below the fifty-five percent claimed by the junta, while the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party declared an "overwhelming victory" despite securing just six percent of votes in the previous election. During the voting period, the United Nations documented at least 170 civilian deaths across 408 junta airstrikes, including a January attack in Kachin state's Bhamo township that killed as many as fifty civilians.
The Unbreakable Spirit of Myanmar's People
Through five years of revolutionary struggle, Myanmar's people have demonstrated remarkable resilience against overwhelming military force. They have shown that popular will outweighs all weaponry the junta can deploy, even with Chinese and Russian support. Current international strategies have created an environment where transnational criminal enterprises—including scam centres, drug trafficking, and human smuggling—flourish alongside the violence.
The people of Myanmar maintain their unshakable conviction that no political future can include an army that commits genocide, burns entire towns, displaces hundreds of thousands across borders, perpetrates gang rapes, attacks first responders to natural disasters, uses civilians as human shields, forcibly conscripts youth as cannon fodder, and imprisons thirty thousand political prisoners.
Time for Fundamental Policy Reassessment
Myanmar has become unsustainable by any reasonable standard. The military demonstrates no interest in transition, instead waging total war against its population. The international community must undertake a radical rethink that properly acknowledges, respects, and works toward realising the legitimate aspirations of Myanmar's people for freedom, justice, and dignity.
Five years of revolutionary struggle have proven that while the junta can massacre communities, it cannot extinguish a nation's thirst for fundamental human rights and self-determination.
