After pointing a finger at what it calls “unscrupulous businessmen” for the worsening economic crisis, Myanmar’s military regime is now blaming “illiterate segments of the population” for instability in the country.
Addressing a coordination meeting for a literacy campaign for rural and ethnic people on Tuesday, deputy junta chief Soe Win said the fact that some 4 million people in Myanmar are illiterate is to blame for the “terrorist acts” happening today in the country, referring to the popular revolt against the regime.
Some 4.1 million people aged 15 and above were recorded as illiterate in a 2019 intercensal survey, and today’s “terrorists acts” are a consequence of this, said Soe Win, who also stressed that ethnic people should have knowledge of Burmese, which is the official language of Myanmar.
Those who will implement and participate in democracy and federalism must be literate, said Soe Win, who was part of the 22nd intake of the Defense Services Academy (DSA).
The literacy campaign was launched after junta boss Min Aung Hlaing, who was part of the academy’s 19th intake, told a junta meeting on Aug. 30 that people in rural and remote areas of the country must be taught how to read and write.
By putting a focus on rural illiteracy, the regime is attempting to tarnish the image of the armed revolution against it. It is well known, however, that many of the people involved in the popular revolution, on the front lines or in other ways, are doctors, nurses, engineers, lecturers and university students.
Min Aung Hlaing’s literacy campaign is inspired by the “3-Rs” (reading, writing and arithmetic) drive conducted under the dictatorship of one of his predecessors, Ne Win.
The regime chief has hailed the 3-Rs push as a success, though he has failed to mention that Ne Win’s Burma Socialist Programme Party-led regime granted no budget for the campaign. Instead, its success was a result of the public’s enthusiasm and commitment, and the work of university and college students who served as volunteer teachers.
The revived campaign shows how out of touch with reality Min Aung Hlaing is, promoting a literacy drive in the very ethnic minority and rural areas where his junta is bombing and torching schools and forcing hundreds of thousands of people to flee.
Min Aung Hlaing has admitted that 130 townships in the country are outside his regime’s control, with martial law being imposed in nearly 50 towns in Yangon, Mandalay, Sagaing and Magwe regions as well as Chin and Kayah states. In other words, the DSA graduates are incapable of crushing those they dismiss as “illiterates”.
