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Myanmar Ethnic Rebel Coalition to Begin Unity Talks: Report
Signatories to the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement are looking to build an “all-inclusive” ethnic minority front against the junta.
April 29, 2021
In this March 30, 2021, file photo, Myanmar soldiers stand at a small army camp along the river bank near the border of Myanmar and Thailand. Ethnic Karen guerrillas said they captured the base on April 27.
Credit: AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit, File
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A coalition of ethnic armed organizations in Myanmar will begin talks aimed at establishing a common front against the country’s military junta, as the air force increased its strikes on rebel-held territories in the east and north in the country.
Anti-coup protesters hold slogans during a demonstration in Yangon, Myanmar on March 31, 2021.
Credit: AP Photo
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Opponents of Myanmar’s military junta have formally announced plans to set up a “unity government,” releasing a new interim constitution and declaring the military-drafted 2008 constitution void – a move that is likely to harden the country’s battle lines two months since the military coup that plunged it into crisis.
The move was taken by the Committee Representing Pyithu Hluttaw (CRPH), a group of parliamentarians elected at the election in November, which is positioning itself as a nucleus of a sort of internal government-in-exile.
Myanmar Crisis Hinges on Stance of Ethnic Political and Armed Organizations
Ethnic political and armed actors are natural allies of the anti-coup resistance, but they are ambivalent about Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD.
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March 01, 2021
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More than three weeks after the February 1 coup in Myanmar, in which the military toppled the civilian government led by the National League for Democracy (NLD), all attention is on the struggle between the junta and the disparate Civic Disobedience Movement, which has mobilized hundreds of thousands of (mostly young) people from across Myanmar’s geographical, social, and ethnic spectrum.
The protests have been covered in the international media much in the vein of the various “color revolutions” that have taken place in recent years: as a story of the people vs. the dictator. But a decentralized protest movement is not an actor, it cannot negotiate, and it is by itself unlikely to topple a regime. T