Late last month, foreign officials in the army regalia set up their armies in Naypyidaw, the bunkered capital built by the Myanmar army. Ice sounds like ripe glasses. A lavish distribution was laid out for the foreign dignitaries in honor of Myanmar’s Army Day.
On the same day, the army, which took power on February 1, shot dead more than 100 of its own civilians. The military representatives of neighboring countries – including India, China, Thailand and Vietnam – did not condemn the brutality in public, and they grinned with the generals and legitimized their putsch.
The coup in Myanmar feels like a remnant of a Southeast Asian past, when men wander around in uniform in a major dictator’s playground. But it also brings home how a region that was once celebrated for its transforming “people power” revolutions – against Suharto of Indonesia and Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines – has fallen back into autocracy.
From Cambodia and the Philippines to Malaysia and Thailand, democracy is waning. Election politics and civil liberties have eroded. Obedience to the judiciary has weakened opposition forces. Entire political classes are in exile or in prison. Independent media are silenced by leaders who want to hear only one voice: their own.
At the same time, external barriers defended against dictatorship. The Americans – inconsistent human rights crusaders who supported South Asian dictators during the Cold War – have turned inward in recent years, although President Biden recently encouraged an ‘alliance of democracies’. With China and Russia involved, the United Nations Security Council did nothing to punish the Myanmar generals.
“This is a perfect storm against freedom and pluralism that is sweeping across Asia,” said Richard Javad Heydarian, a local political scientist in the Philippines. “The result is democratic fatigue and authoritarian nostalgia in Indonesia and the Philippines, while authoritarian consolidation has taken place elsewhere, the most dramatic in Cambodia and Thailand and now even more violent in Myanmar.”
The era of strong men of the region – all men – has returned. And the new setup could make it easier for China to exercise its influence, although many consider the region more notable for its impressive economic growth as a field of superpowers.
The likelihood of renewed refugees from Myanmar, in the heart of Asia, could destabilize Southeast Asia. Thousands of people are already crossing the border into Thailand for fear of bringing Covid-19 with them.
A planned special meeting on Myanmar by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations offers little hope of action. That consensus-driven group avoids delving into members’ internal affairs. Earlier negotiations among local foreign ministers did not result in a single policy that would deter Myanmar’s coup plotters.
Moreover, many of the leaders of the region do not want to uphold democratic ideals. They used the courts to silence their critics and deal with violent protest movements.
But when authorities look at each other, they are also protesters. In Thailand, students rose up against a government born out of a coup. They used a three-fingered salute from the ‘Hunger Games’ movies to present the challenge. The same gesture was adopted after the putsch in Myanmar, the leitmotif of a million million protest movements.
“Democratization is sweeping the world,” said Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute for Security and International Studies at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. “The revival of authoritarianism in Southeast Asia is part of the overall retreat and return.”
A decade ago, the region looked on a different path. Indonesia would soon elect its first ordinary president, and Malaysia would set aside a ruling party inflated by decades of grafting and protection. Thailand’s generals have managed to go years without a coup. Even in Vietnam, the communist leadership continued with liberalization.
The most important transformation was apparently in Myanmar. The military has led the country since a coup in 1962 and brought it to punishment. In 2015, the generals signed a power-sharing agreement with a civilian leadership ahead of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate who spent 15 years under house arrest. President Barack Obama has gone to Myanmar to sanctify the beginning of a peaceful political transition.
Now Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi was locked in her villa again with possible life imprisonment. Her supporters were arrested and harassed. Soldier has one of me. Aung San Suu picked up Kyi’s followers and burned a tattoo of her face off his arm.
A large part of the rest of Southeast Asia is fully democratic. The leader of Thailand’s last coup, Prayuth Chan-ocha, is still the prime minister. His government has charged dozens of student protesters, some in their teens, with obscure crimes that could carry long sentences. Thai dissidents in exile turned up dead.
After a brief intermission by the government, Malaysia’s old establishment is back in power, including people associated with one of the largest state funds the world has seen in a generation. Vietnam’s opposition to differences of opinion is in high gear. In Cambodia, Hun Sen, the longest-serving leader in Asia, dismantled all opposition and made sense of a family-political dynasty.
President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines may enjoy lasting popularity, but he has witnessed thousands of extrajudicial killings. He also sided with China and presented it as a more constant friend than the United States, which once colonized the Philippines.
China’s growing economic footprint in the region, coinciding with the diminished American moral leadership, has provided local authoritarian coverage for their oppression. Beijing has easily invested in countries with weak human rights records, which has weakened the power of Western financial sanctions.
With Chinese aid, countries like Cambodia can ignore Washington’s threats to commit their aid to political reforms. And the neighbors of Myanmar, China and India included, provided the army with its weapons of war.
“Who was there to say in the last few years that democracy was in free fall in Southeast Asia, to oppose authoritarian and military coups?” says Bridget Welsh, a local political analyst at the University of Nottingham Asia Research Institute Malaysia.
But in some places, rising repression has at least hardened the decision of dissidents. Protesters in Thailand, who gathered hundreds of thousands last year, have resumed their rallies, even though most of their young leaders are now in jail.
When the riot police fired rubber bullets near the Grand Palace in Bangkok last month, Thip Tarranitikul said she wanted to remove the army from politics.
“The longer they stay, the more they become addicted to power,” she said. “And when they are addicted to power, they begin to oppress the people.”
Power from the barrel of the gun can not buy popularity. In Myanmar, it appears that senior general Min Aung Hlaing, the army chief, has underestimated the people’s commitment to democratic change. Millions marched against him. Millions have also joined nationwide strikes which means his government is unable to function.
There is little reason to believe that the military will withdraw, given its decades in power. According to a monitoring group, it has killed more than 700 civilians in the past two months. Thousands were arrested, including medics, reporters, a model, a comedian and a beauty blogger.
But the resistance has demographics on its side.
Southeast Asia is possibly ruled by old men, but more than half of the population is under 30 years of age. Myanmar’s reforms over the past decade have benefited young people who are eager to connect with the world. In Thailand, the same group confronts the old hierarchies of military and monarchy.
Regional defenders of democracy, including the beleagured dissidents of nearby Hong Kong, have formed what they call the Milk Tea Alliance online, citing a shared affinity for the sweet brew. (Twitter recently gave the move his own emoji.) On encrypted programs, they trade tips to protect themselves from tear gas and bullets. They also bonded over the exorbitant impact the pandemic had on young workers, in countries where income inequality is growing.
‘The youth of Southeast Asia, these young digital people, inherently despise authoritarianism because it does not match their democratic lifestyle. “They are not going to give up fighting back,” said Mr. Thitinan of Chulalongkorn University said. “Therefore, authoritarianism in the region, just as bad as it looks now, is not a permanent state.”
In Yangon, the largest city in Myanmar, protesters faced the army’s guns with the feeling of an existential mission.
“I’m not afraid to die,” said Ko Nay Myo Htet, a high school student who manned one of the barricades to defend neighborhoods. “I want a better life for the next generation.”
Muktita Suhartono reported.