Image: NUG foreign Minister Zin Mar Aung
Mizzima Editorial
The Myanmar National Unity Government (NUG) Foreign Minister touched on an important issue in an interview last week.
Zin Mar Aung was speaking to Nikkei Asia magazine and mentioned a core issue that will need to be dealt with after the Myanmar military junta is defeated.
As part of any future transformation to democracy, the parallel government’s foreign minister pledged to turn the country’s “unprofessional” army into one that would “protect the people and institutions.”
“We are not trying to abolish the entire military. We are trying to transform the military. We need heroes and reformists in the military,” Zin Mar Aung was reported as saying.
Reworking the Myanmar military will need great care as the NUG and other reformers seek to create a federal, democratic union. Myanmar’s Tatmadaw has failed the Myanmar people. It was not just the illegal usurping of power from the people – kicking out the duly elected Aung San Suu Kyi government. It has been the brutality the Tatmadaw has displayed over the last two and a half years. The body tasked with “protecting the people” has done the opposite and carried out over 200 massacres, indiscriminate attacks on civilians, tens of thousands of arrests, and overseen brutal torture and killing.
According to the NUG, junta leader Min Aung Hlaing and his cohorts have overseen this brutality and deserve no place in a future Myanmar. Not only that. They need to be brought to account.
The future of the Myanmar armed forces will need careful thought and the NUG – as self-professed representatives of the people’s will – need to tread carefully. The Myanmar Tatmadaw is the birthchild of Myanmar Independence hero Aung San – Aung San Suu Kyi’s father. Aung San – if he had been alive – would likely have watched with horror and sadness the trajectory of the armed forces from General Ne Win’s coup in 1962 up until the present day.
Given the potential demands of the NUG and the array of resistance players, crafting a suitable place for the armed forces in a free Myanmar under a federal, democratic union will be an extremely difficult
process. Heroes and reformists in the Tatmadaw will indeed be needed as the Myanmar armed forces are shaped into the servant and protector of the people.
