Thailand has recently launched an initiative to create a safe humanitarian zone, sometimes called a “humanitarian corridor”, across the Thailand-Myanmar border to deliver food and medical supplies to local communities and tens of thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) who have been forced to leave their villages and homes due to the military junta’s systematic campaign of terror against the civilian population.
It has been a longstanding demand of Thai authorities, as well as Indian and Chinese authorities, to open the borders to allow unhindered humanitarian support to civilian populations, IDPs and refuges in urgent need. However, in spite of three years of the junta’s war against the citizens of the country, in spite of 2.6 million internally displaced people and at least one third of the population being in serious humanitarian need, none of Myanmar’s neighbors has been ready so far to open the borders for the easy flow of humanitarian aid.
Instead, they have all tacitly contributed to the junta’s notorious four cuts policy, which is the essence of how the Myanmar military is waging the war against the resistance to its dictatorial and predatory rule. The military intentionally creates a huge humanitarian crisis by burning villages and destroying food supplies. After that it cuts the uprooted population off from fuel, food, shelter and medicines and demands a “ceasefire” (which means surrender) in exchange for lifting the blockade. International aid has often been used as a carrot to lure communities in need to succumb to military rule and accept pacification in “safe areas”.
Because of that, at first and superficial sight it looks very encouraging that Thailand under the new government has launched an initiative to create humanitarian corridors and humanitarian zones. No surprise, ASEAN and other international actors have been quick to welcome and praise the initiative.
However, the design of the whole initiative has a serious flaw. I even dare to say that the initiative will fail because of its flawed design.
There are many problematic elements in the initiative. The most profound problem is that the initiative is not really meant to address the humanitarian needs of the population. It is meant as an instrument to invite the “SAC to reengage with ASEAN and to reengage with the international community”, as explicitly said by Thai Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Sihasak Phuangketkeow. The SAC (State Administration Council) is the Myanmar junta’s official name.
The political plan behind the “humanitarian initiative” is to try to bring the military junta and other political and resistance actors to the negotiating table, and the promise of aid is only a carrot. Basically the message is, either you agree to “de-escalate violence” and start “all-inclusive” negotiations, which we will facilitate—and then we will open corridors for aid. Or, if you reject, we will leave you for one more year in insolation, wilderness and barbarity of “your own conflict”.
Everybody sees that the junta and military are seriously weakened and shaken. So Myanmar’s neighbors and ASEAN see an opportunity to bring the junta back to 2021, when the 5PC (Five-Point Consensus) was formulated. They want the junta to make a few concessions so that they can “bring it back to ASEAN”. “Bringing back” the junta to ASEAN community means legitimizing it as a de facto government with which other actors in Myanmar can then just forge a deal in exchange for some limited concessions.
A political aim behind the “humanitarian initiative” is the intention to treat genocidal power-usurpers in uniform as the inevitable and unavoidable key factor in Myanmar’s “stability” and with combination of soft pressure and humanitarian incentives try to force everybody else to surrender, in a soft way, to ongoing military dominance in politics and the economy.
The military junta has lost control of over 50 percent of the territory and is under relentless pressure from multiple sides. The Myanmar military is demoralized and overstretched and is gradually imploding from the bottom up. Resistance forces are liberating more and more territory, gaining more and more weapons from occupied and abandoned military posts and are developing bottom-up governing structures over liberated territories. With limited resources they are providing humanitarian aid and shelter for IDPs, education and health care, law and order, and justice.
With such developments, neighboring countries and ASEAN are scared that the Myanmar military will fall apart. They have made a tacit decision that they will offer the junta a survival lifeline. They do not want the junta to win. The junta is too atrocious and too hated by the entire population to stand behind it openly. However, the neighbors and ASEAN do not want the junta to be defeated either.
So the unspoken, implicit plan behind the “new humanitarian initiative” is nothing new. It is a repeated effort to bring Myanmar back to 2010 and to an old framework of three-sided negotiations with the military being treated as the pivotal stakeholder.
This unspoken plan also means that the National Unity Government (NUG) and the whole Spring Revolution (the whole young generation and their aspirations; strike committees, Civil Disobedience Movement, People’s Defense Force resistance, civil society, National Unity Consultative Council, Committee Representing Pyidaungsu Hluttaw and other MPs elected in 2020 and many others who have driven the last three years of heroic liberation struggle against the attempted and failed military coup) need to be taken out of the political equation. The whole country is supposed to go back to elite negotiations between the military gang in uniform, ethnic armed organizations (EAOs) and whoever will be manufactured as “political parties”. Deep systemic corruption is a lubricant that should once again facilitate “deal making”.
Devil is in the details
One may dismiss those arguments as baseless speculation on my part. So let me also look at the specific and concrete details of the supposed implementers.
The Thai plan to provide life-saving assistance to the uprooted Myanmar communities taking refuge along the Thai-Myanmar border is supposed to be agreed and created by a “joint task force” with Myanmar’s military regime being part of that “task force”. The NUG and EAOs are not included in any way in the “joint task force”. They are legitimate and enjoy the trust and consent of the people and IDPs, but still they are left out. At some later stage, they will be made a “take it or leave it” offer, some deal agreed and accepted by the junta. If EAOs and the NUG will not accept this soft subordination to the junta’s intentions and aims, they will be blamed by diplomats as “hardliners” and “war mongers” who do not care for the humanitarian needs of the displaced population. Nobody will discuss who has displaced that population and why they are afraid to return to their original homes and villages (often burned and bombed by the military).
The ASEAN Coordinating Center for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Center) would play a key role as an observer. The AHA Center is yet another body where representatives of the Myanmar military sit. The Thai and Myanmar Red Cross organizations will be used as the main operational actors in this cross-border humanitarian program accepted by the Thai government and Myanmar military (Note: It is not said who will provide funds for the whole operation and that is one more stumbling block where the whole initiative could crumble.)
If my above warnings are not taken seriously, it is imperative for regional and international diplomats, aid donors and genuine Myanmar stakeholders to be reminded of the historical abuse and perversion of the Myanmar Red Cross (MRCS) by the Myanmar military. This is to judge the ability and possibility of the MRCS to maintain neutrality, impartiality, ethical conduct and do-no-harm principles while being co-opted by the Myanmar military.
It’s a known fact (and even admitted by their president Thar Hla Shwe in 2015) that the MRCS has often been co-opted and misused by the military. For many decades. Some of MRCS’s members were used as police and military informants. They have assisted the army and police in overnight guests checks, at transport check-points, and even in arrests of dissidents and important political leaders. There are many genuinely altruistic volunteers in the MRCS, but a significant percentage is pro-military.
The MRCS and its members were used in the past in community mobilization for harmful initiatives by the military including surveillance of dissidents; household overnight checks; military-organized street demonstrations; and extremist Buddhist religious movements.
Some of those informants of the Red Cross (and the Auxiliary Fire Brigade, another similar but smaller organization assisting the regular fire brigade) are given incentives to become policemen or regular Fire Brigade members as a career path.
The military in the past had a Red Cross column marching in the Armed Forces Day parade on March 27 as an auxiliary to the military troops.
After a recess of such activities under the partially democratic government, since the coup in 2021, the SAC has intensified its co-option again by re-organizing the Executive Committee of the MRCS with retired or former military officers, mostly from the military medical corps. (See some key members below.)
Since the coup, the Finance Department of the MRCS has been placed under the Ministry of Health of the SAC (reinforcing the co-option of a non-government entity under a ministry). Most of the international donor funded projects the MRCS had been implementing before the coup have been disrupted.
In 2022, a leaked order of the junta leader revealed a plan to misuse the MRCS further, along with other similar networks and groups including the Auxiliary Fire Brigade, Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA) and other groups, as auxiliaries to assist the military in fighting against the resistance forces.
MRCS Executive Committee (EC)
These key members of the EC are formerly from the military and served under the medical corps of the Directorate of Medical Services. Although they would be informally addressed using their military rank, officially they only use the titles Dr. or Professor Dr.
- President: Prof. Dr. Myo Nyunt (retired colonel, a pathologist)
- General Secretary: Prof. Dr. Htin Zaw Soe (retired major, retired rector of public health university)
- Full-time executive member: Prof. Dr. Tin Maung Hlaing (retired colonel and head of military medical research department)
- Part-time executive member: Prof. Dr. Soe Hlaing (retired brigadier general and director of the Directorate of Medical Services; also, personal physician of former number two Vice Senior General Maung Aye)
- Part-time executive member: Prof. Dr. Myint Han (a retired director general of the Ministry of Health, formerly a lieutenant in the military medical corps)
References:
- Let Us Stick to Humanitarian Work: Red Cross (Irrawaddy), 2015: https://www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/let-us-stick-humanitarian-work-red-cross.html
- Open Letter from Myanmar CSOs Regarding the Myanmar Red Cross Society’s Attendance at the Murderous Junta’s Armed Forces Day Celebration Violating Principles of ICRC and IFRC (Progressive Voice Myanmar), 2021: https://progressivevoicemyanmar.org/2021/04/09/open-letter-from-myanmar-csos-regarding-the-myanmar-red-cross-societys-attendance-at-the-murderous-juntas-armed-forces-day-celebration-violates-principles-of-icrc-and-ifrc-mrcs-part/
- Junta Plans to Bring Fire Department, Red Cross and Buddhist Network into New Security Force (Myanmar Now), 2022: https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/junta-plans-to-bring-fire-department-red-cross-and-buddhist-network-into-new-security-force/
- Myanmar Red Cross Society – Structure and Management: https://www.redcross.org.mm/en_US/who-we-are/structure-management/
Igor Blazevic is a senior adviser at the Prague Civil Society Centre. Between 2011 and 2016 he worked in Myanmar as the head lecturer of the Educational Initiatives Program.
