Junta boss Min Aung Hlaing inadvertently pointed a finger at himself when he told a meeting of his regime’s cabinet on Friday that the majority of Myanmar people are suffering from the “imbecility” of a group of people.
At the meeting, Min Aung Hlaing blamed revolutionary forces and ethnic armed organizations for the instability currently rocking certain parts of the country, saying the majority of local people are unnecessarily suffering as a result.
But critics said that if any group of people is to be blamed for the ongoing crisis in Myanmar, it is the military leadership, which brought economic chaos on the country by staging a coup.
Min Aung Hlaing claimed the State Administration Council, as the regime calls itself, is striving to achieve equal development across the country, but areas experiencing “terrorism” are lagging behind.
But his assessment is belied by the situation in the commercial capital, Yangon, which is relatively stable compared to the rest of the country, seeing only occasional attacks that have not had significant economic impacts. There, not only low-income families, but even middle-income households are suffering.
Soaring food prices have resulted in long queues of Yangonites waiting to buy rice and cooking oil sold directly by the regime at reduced prices. Such scenes are strongly reminiscent of conditions under the country’s first military regime led by the Burma Socialist Programme Party, when necessities like rice and soap were rationed.
The price of the country’s staple, rice, has more than doubled since the coup, seeing a particularly rapid surge in the past few months. The situation for cooking oil is no different. This is all happening in the country once dubbed the “rice bowl of Asia”.
At the meeting, Min Aung Hlaing called on ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) to “have goodwill” toward the country—as if it were the EAOs that are conducting deadly air and artillery strikes on villages including schools, healthcare facilities and religious buildings, and torching villages in central Myanmar—and with them the silos farmers use to store rice seeds for cultivation.
For its part, the regime seems decidedly lacking in “goodwill” towards ethnic people. Hundreds of people, mostly ethnic Kachin civilians, died in an air raid last year in northern Myanmar’s Kachin State, courtesy of Min Aung Hlaing.
The regime has also barred international aid agencies from delivering relief supplies in Rakhine in western Myanmar where more than 1 million people were affected by a devastating cyclone in May. Thousands of houses were damaged or destroyed, and many haven’t been rebuilt.
Min Aung Hlaing has not spared Chin and Kayah (Karenni) states, either. Thantlang in Chin and Demoso in Kayah have been virtually flattened, thanks to the junta boss.
According to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, more than 1.6 million people have been displaced since the coup, with Sagaing Region alone accounting for nearly 800,000 internally displaced people.
And what is Min Aung Hlaing doing to curb raging inflation? He has pointed a finger at those he calls “self-seeking businessmen”.
With the country well on the way to becoming a failed state, Min Aung Hlaing continues to spend much of the public’s money on the civil war he ignited.
