The son of an admiral who served under Myanmar’s previous junta has again defended the military’s 2021 coup, following in the footsteps of his father.
Aye Chan, son of ex-admiral and former minister Soe Thane, told foreign correspondents in New Delhi that the coup was triggered by fraud committed by the National League for Democracy (NLD) in the 2020 general election.
The Foreign Correspondents Club (FCC) of South Asia had invited Aye Chan – a member of the junta-controlled Myanmar Press Council (MPC) – to give a talk on Tuesday, ahead of the third anniversary of the coup.
The invitation came just six months after 10 India-based correspondents resigned in protest from FCC South Asia after its president Venkat Narayan visited junta ministers in Naypyitaw in June last year.
In August 2022, Aye Chan used the UNESCO-backed Dili Dialogue Forum to claim the military coup was justified. He told regional media representatives that the NLD was “a party of the corrupt” and had “rigged the election”, resulting in the coup. Parroting junta propaganda, he also defamed the country’s anti-regime movement and its attempt to restore democracy, calling it “terrorism”.
He mentioned nothing of the junta’s media crackdown, including the arbitrary arrest, killing and imprisonment of journalists and revoking licenses of outlets reporting on junta atrocities. Instead, he accused independent media of exacerbating the country’s crisis by reporting “fake news”.
Twenty-nine media organizations protested his statement.
Aye Chan, 51, became an MPC member following the coup, when its independent voices were replaced by pro-military writers and media owners under a new chief, the military-supporting poet and ex-major Ohn Maung (penname Myinmu Maung Naing Moe).
He has since acted as mouthpiece for junta boss Min Aung Hlaing’s narratives at regional forums.
Aye Chan joined the press council as owner of Myanmar Insider, which he uses to promote regime propaganda, including the claim of NLD election fraud. In one article, he concludes his limp and clumsy arguments for why anti-regime activities would fail by openly admitting: “Myanmar Insider has become a mouthpiece for the junta.”
The publication’s address – shared with a KFC outlet on Bogyoke Aung San Road in downtown Yangon – is also questionable, given the building used to be a state asset under the Transportation Department. How it ended up in Aye Chan’s hands is not known. An advert on the Myanmar Insider website offers the building for rent as a “quality office space in central downtown.”
According to his LinkedIn profile, Aye Chan is the chairman of the E-Commerce Association of Myanmar and deputy chairman of the Myanmar Digital Economy Association. He is also the director of rgo47, an online shopping site that has become one of the targets of a popular boycott of military-related businesses since the coup.
Aye Chan’s father Soe Thane, who served as admiral in Than Shwe’s regime and minister in Thein Sein’s quasi-civilian government, is also an enthusiastic supporter of the 2021 putsch.
“Myanmar’s independence was restored on Feb. 1, 2021,” he wrote soon after the military takeover.
Historian Thant Myint-U praised Soe Thane as a reformist in Thein Sein’s government, calling him “the principle architect of the normalization of ties with the West” and “Burma’s main cheerleader abroad”, in his book “The Hidden History of Burma”.
However, Soe Thane’s actions since the 2021 coup prove he remains a military man at heart.
Myanmar’s Independent Press Council, which was formed by journalists in exile, on Wednesday condemned FCC South Asia’s decision to invite Aye Chan. It urged such organizations to act in a more responsible manner and support the struggle of Myanmar people and particularly of journalists in defending press freedom against repression by Myanmar’s “illegitimate” military regime.
