For those looking to engage with the Myanmar military regime, make no mistake: The men in uniform are blatant liars. I repeat: They don’t deserve your trust at all.
The latest reminder of their cunning nature came with their attempted cover-up of the deadly shooting of a senior Buddhist monk by junta soldiers two days ago, in which they accused an anti-regime People’s Defense Force (PDF) group of the killing.
But their lie was exposed in a video in which a monk who was with the victim at the time of the incident said the regime soldiers chased them down in a truck and fired a volley of shots at the car carrying the monks, leaving the senior monk dead.
The surviving monk’s revelation of course left junta boss Min Aung Hlaing red-faced. He has proclaimed himself the protector and promoter of Buddhism in Myanmar, only for his soldiers to shoot dead a 78-year-old monk who was a retired member of the country’s highest Buddhist authority.
More importantly, the junta’s attempt to shift the blame by accusing a PDF group of a killing it had nothing to do with should be viewed with the utmost seriousness, as it’s a grim reminder of just how fundamentally dishonest the Min Aung Hlaing-led Myanmar military regime really is.
If they are prepared to lie so blatantly about such a killing, what does it say about their other claims, such as their justification for the 2021 coup—that they acted in response to “vote rigging” in the 2020 general election? Should we believe it?
Absolutely not. International observers praised the election as free and fair, and within days of the coup the world witnessed the anger of disenfranchised Myanmar voters nationwide, who flooded the streets shouting “Respect our votes!”
Are we to believe the regime’s repeated statements that it is working with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to implement the bloc’s five-point peace plan for Myanmar?
Think about the 3 million people who have been internally displaced by the junta’s bombings and arson attacks since the regime agreed to follow the plan in April 2021, not to mention the junta’s killing of more than 5,000 people for their anti-regime activism. If the junta is implementing the peace plan, why are there so many internally displaced people and why are civilians still being killed? One of the plan’s requirements is that the junta act to stop the violence.
Should we believe the junta’s claim that it seeks peace with ethnic armed groups as it wages war in ethnic areas? What about their purported attempts to repatriate Rohingya refugees to Rakhine State, even as they recruit Rohingya to fight the Arakan Army, which enjoys overwhelming support among Rakhine people?
More than three years after he seized power, should we believe Min Aung Hlaing’s frequent justification for the ongoing military rule in Myanmar—that his army has “temporarily” assumed responsibility for the state in line with the constitution?
His recent announcement that he will hold an election next year deserves similar skepticism. You can’t hope for anything positive from a poll organized by an army that stole power from a civilian government based on a false claim of electoral fraud.
Everything Min Aung Hlaing and his regime says must be taken with more than a few grains of salt—everyone in the Myanmar military junta was born to lie. Their cover-up of the shooting of the monk is the latest reminder that the Myanmar regime is totally untrustworthy.
Internationally, now is the time for anyone who is eager to engage in or who has partnered with the regime—from India to China to other neighboring countries or even some others in the West—to ask themselves some difficult questions, starting with “Should I believe them?” It’s a question they should be asking out of their own self-interest.
Just a reminder: Befriending a liar will do you no good in the long term, and only an evildoer listens to wicked lips.
