Myanmar Military Coup (Opinion)

By now all of us have heard the news, a military coup in Myanmar and a complete take over of power for a year (Officially) on the basis of "national emergency". But why is this happening, what led up to this and what does this mean for the future of Myanmar and the Rohingya people. 

First of all let's make one thing clear, this is bad. I've seen some people on social media being happy saying "Aung San Suu Kyi (Nobel prize winner State State Counsellor of Myanmar)deserves it for committing and denying the Rohingya genocide" Those people forget that it was the army who committed the acts. Before we get to that point, we need to briefly visit Myanmar's recent history.

For most of Myanmar (Or Burma) history the army has been actually in control, exercising a brutal socialist dictatorship regime. They have been involved with suppressing media, multiple ethnic groups and even known to shoot to kill peaceful protestors. Since independence the army has established overwhelming control over everything as a socialist state, this meant everything their citizens watch on media is regulated to hide their army's brutal acts. It is because of this many their are not aware of Rohingya genocide with in their own country. 

It was only in recent years that under pressure the army finally allowed democratic elections which resulted in Aung San Suu Kyi party's victory. Yet she herself had very limited powers as she was only allowed to be State councilor while the military retained it's influence .This is the reason Rohingya genocide has gone unpunished, because the democratic government had no power to stop the army and was under pressure by "Deep pockets" to deny the events. This is also combined with support of some extremist Buddhist monks and social media propaganda. Hence when I said this is bad, I meant that the very same people who committed the Rohingya genocide are now in power and it's gotten even harder to make them answer for their crimes. The future for the Rohingya seems dark

As for why the coup happened, a few possible reasons can be highlighted. In 2020 a new election took place which the NLD (National league of democracy) won in a land slide. The army who's party got left behind weren't going to allow this to continue. They claimed election is invalid due to voter fraud and that if nothing is done they will take action. Reasons why the Army feared NLD is because they were passing a bill that meant army generals will have to retire after age of 65. Meanwhile the leader of this coup is army general Min Aung Hlaing, you can probably guess he is older than 65. Well that's one reason. Another reason is that with in current constitution the Army gets to choose 1/4 representatives in parliament. This privilege was under threat if NLD came to power. Additionally Burma received $350 million Covid relief aid. It's possible the army heads wanted a slice of that pie. 

And lastly, this same general leading the coup along with others in support of it was directly involved with Rohingya genocide. Under a NLD government they could have been subjected to inquiries and their crimes could have surfaced. Hence to avoid being caught this happened. To sum it up, this is bad, as if the army continues to retain control, the Rohingya people might never get justice and crimes against humanity will go unpunished. Further more this absence of injustice could encourage further acts of terrorisms by the Myanmar army upon the Rohingya.