In THe NEws

On 1 February, the Myanmar military junta detained de facto leader and Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, along with President Win Myint and other senior politicians, in the capital of Naypyidaw.

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Officially, the Burmese military declared the coup on February 1, 2021, to reject the election results, accused of fraud. Many observers suspect, through the coup, the generals are plotting to return to power, to continue to control the Burmese economy.

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As protests grow against the February 1 military coup in Myanmar/Burma, the country’s military elites try to protect their ill-gotten gains, and Australian mining companies carry on as if nothing happened.

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Mines, banks, petroleum, agriculture, tourism: Myanmar's ruling junta has vested interests in large swathes of the country's economy, providing it a colossal -- and closely guarded -- fortune that the United States has targetted with sanctions.

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La junta militar que tomó el poder en Birmania tras el golpe contra Aung San Suu Kyi controla los principales recursos naturales y económicos del país, entre ellos minas, bancos y turismo, una riqueza en la mira de las sanciones de Estados Unidos.

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2月1日清晨，緬甸國防軍發動「政變」，把國務資政昂山素姬、總統溫敏（Win Myint）、以及執政黨全國民主聯盟（NLD、全民盟）的重要成員與國會議員拘禁（註：根據緬甸軍隊的說法，有關行動符合緬甸憲法規條，故此並非「政變」），直佈國家進入長達一年的緊急狀態，由國防軍總司令敏昂萊（Min Aung Hlaing）大將掌管國家行政、立法、司法權。

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The question still in the forefront of the Burmese people’s minds is why has the coup taken place? Well, in the words of Woodward and Bernstein, follow the money.

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စစ်အာဏာရှင်စနစ်ဆိုသည်မှာ ကမ္ဘာပေါ်မှ လူဆန်သည့်မည်သည့်လူမျိုးစုမှာမဆို လက်သင့်မခံတော့သည့် စနစ်တစ်ခုဖြစ်သည့်တိုင် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ၌မူ လူတစ်စုကောင်းစားရေးအတွက် ပြည်သူတစ်ရပ်လုံးရဲ့ ဆန္ဒနဲ့ဆန့်ကျင်ကာ ပြီးခဲ့သည့်ဖေဖော်ဝါရီလ (၁) ရက်နေ့က ရွံရှာဖွယ်ရာစစ်အာဏာသိမ်းမှုဖြစ်ပွားခဲ့ပါတယ်။

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Min Aung Hlaing is now the latest in a short line of Myanmar military despots, from the original coup-maker General Ne Win who ruled between 1962 to 1988

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The overthrow of Myanmar’s democratically elected government by the military last week is drawing international attention to the armed forces’ vast but murky business empire as pressure builds on foreign companies to break ties with it.

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