Myanmar

Myanmar, officially the Republic of the Union of Myanmar and known as Burma until 1989, is a country in Southeast Asia. The USSR considered Burma a socialist-leaning country, given that it was not socialist but was laying the foundations for socialism. The Communist Party of Burma was pro-Chinese and thus rather at odds with the Soviets, but in practice the two, while distant, retained cordial relations. China, on its part, was pro-CPB since it opposed the Burman state during the 1960s and early 70s and hoped that supporting the Communist Party could lead to its overthrow.

History

After Burma achieved independence in 1948, increasing domestic differences within the country led to civil war. The CPB went underground in March 1948 and waged an armed struggle against the Burmese government. In 1955, the CPB adopted a party program providing for the cessation of the civil war and the restoration of domestic peace. In the 1950s and early 1960s, however, the government refused to enter into negotiations with the party, insisting that the party's armed forces surrender. Preliminary peace negotiations between the CPB and the government of the Revolutionary Council in 1963 also ended without result. The party leadership adopted a new program in 1964 aimed at overthrowing the revolutionary-democratic government by force, which according to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, was done in "ignorance" of "the progressive nature of the socioeconomic reforms carried out in Burma".

Ne Win, military dictator during the "socialist" period from the early 1960s to the late 80s, was not a Marxist but did consider himself to be a socialist — despite neither allying with the Soviets nor resisting imperialism. Following the 8888 Uprising in 1988, Ne Win resigned and there was a promise to transition to "democracy". Overall, however, the uprising failed and was violently suppressed despite the minor concessions, instead leading to a regime change within the ruling junta. A coup ousted the faux-socialist junta and replaced it with the "State Peace and Development Council", a government openly led by the military (the Burmese armed forces operate more like a political movement rather than as an institution of the state, with post-Sadat pre-Arab Spring Egypt, Rhee-era South Korea, or Showa-era Japan being similar, however unlike those states the Burmese military lacks a competent external military threat). Aung San Suu Kyi was a major leader and icon in the 8888 uprising, and to legitimize themselves and the fall of the "Burmese Path to Socialism", the junta held elections, which they hoped their own political party would win. Instead Aung San Suu Kyi won by a landslide, leading to her house arrest and the invalidation of the elections. During her house arrest she was seen by the outside world, especially the United Kingdom, as a martyr of democracy, with Time Magazine naming her in 1999 one of the "Children of Gandhi" and his spiritual heir to nonviolence. Her house arrest term ended on 13 November 2010, and in 2015 she was elected as State Counsellor, which is a position similar to the role of prime minister and which was created to circumvent a constitutional clause that was aimed at her which forbade presidential candidates who have a spouse or children with foreign citizenship. The military signed a deal where no matter what, their political party would maintain 25% of the seats in congress at a minimum. Despite the praise of much of the western world for being such a great progressive figure and all, it was not long before this "icon of democracy" disgraced herself — a year into her term the Rohingya genocide began, and she denied the massacres of the Burmese army, on top of prosecuting journalists. In 2021, the Burmese military sought to remove her for unclear reasons. One theory is that it might just be that it sees a chance to take her out without the world doing anything, thus restoring itself to absolute power once again. The military did poorly in the 2020 general election, and people generally approve of Aung San Suu Kyi, with 70% of the people thinking that the country is going in the right direction, even though it is doing actual ethnic cleansing.

Persecution of minorities by the junta

The Burmese junta did two major things: first was try to build an ethnostate in a country that contains a lot of ethnic minorities from the region sometimes referred to as "Zomia"; the second was it tried to tie the Burmese national identity inherently to Buddhism — in a country with many minorities dating back centuries. One of these minorities are the MuslimRohingya, the descendants of Bengali Muslims that settled in the southwestern coastal regions, known as Arakan. For some reason, the British Raj attached this Muslim, Eastern Indo-Aryan-speaking people to the mostly Buddhist Burmese speaking province that would become Myanmar. The Rohingya had long argued for secession and/or union with East Pakistan/Bangladesh, but their situation only worsened after the 8888 uprising. A major result of the uprising was the spawning of a variety of guerilla groups, most of these were geared towards democratization, some form of Marxism, or ethno-religious autonomy, but the Rohingya were unique in that they were so different they often pushed for outright succession. This meant that the Burmese state often targeted them the hardest because, simply put, they could get away with it. The Rohingya never adopted Wahhabism or some other form of Islamism during this time despite Al-Qaeda and other groups trying to infiltrate it, who never got far in doing so. As a result of the Burmese state attacking the Rohingya, who then struck back with crude terror bombings, this created a radical form of ethno-Buddhism which targeted Islam as a "foreign religion" that needed to be purged in order to preserve peace and order, giving rise to Buddhist religious extremists. When Aung San Suu Kyi, the poster girl of democracy takes over, the military ease their control of law and order in the country, which allows these Buddhist extremists to launch pogroms against the Rohingya and other small Muslim groups. This has created one of the worst refugee crises of the 21st century, with currently 1-1.5 million Rohingya living in refugee camps in Bangladesh, with another 500,000 in Pakistan — more than the current number left in Myanmar itself; all the while the world, and most importantly Aung San Suu Kyi, did nothing.