The sentence in the illustration accompanying today’s column, originally photographed on a sign board in Mandalay, speaks a thousand words. During a visit to Myanmar to retrace my father’s journey as an eight-year-old, who, along with his family, walked from northwestern Myanmar to Dimapur in Nagaland (India) over a period of nearly 40 days as refugees of the Second World War, this sign captured my interest the most. Both my grandfathers worked for the British administration in Burma and I grew up hearing of the travails they encountered on the journey.
My father’s attempts to revisit his childhood home proved futile from 1980s onwards as Myanmar passed from one military regime to another, till the reform process started in 2010, allowing us an opportunity to visit it in 2014. What began as an academic exercise turned into a memorable homecoming experience that I shared with my 80-year-old father. The sentence in the signboard “The tatmadaw shall never betray the national c
Daily Monitor
Tuesday February 09 2021
Protesters face off with police standing guard on a road during a demonstration against the military coup in Naypyidaw, Myanmar yesterday. PHOTO / AFP
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Brahma Chellaney, a Professor of Strategic Studies at the New Delhi-based Center for Policy Research, says imposing sanctions on the country is not the solution to its problems.
Directly or indirectly, the military has always called the shots in Myanmar. And now that it has removed the decade-old façade of gradual democratisation by detaining civilian leaders and seizing power, Western calls to punish the country with sanctions and international isolation are growing louder. Heeding them would be a mistake.