Episode 136: Myanmar Coup - What is Happening and Why?

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Ian: Hey everyone, you are listening to “Coffee with Gringos.” I'm Ian Kennedy.

Paige: And I'm Paige Sutherland.

Ian: And today we're going to be touching upon a very important and dark current event that's happening right now in the Southeast Asian country of Myanmar, where they have recently experienced a military coup and has put the country in a state of emergency resulting in hundreds of protesters dying and thousands being arrested. So, listeners, as always, if you get lost, go online and check out that audio guide and transcript at www.dynamicenglish.cl. So, Paige, this new conflict in Myanmar—have you been following it at all?

Paige: Sadly, I have not. I'm ashamed to admit this as a journalist but I've been focused on national news with everything going on these days that I haven't been paying attention to international stuff but I should be so I do want to learn more. So, I'm excited to hear what you know, Ian.

Ian: Well, first of all, to start, like you said, it's so hard when we have so much news coming in and out of the cycle, sometimes we just get lost. Sometimes we don't catch everything that happens so fair enough on that side. So, I've been following it a little bit. I found it really interesting so I'd love to share more with you guys. So, basically, Myanmar is a pretty big country that's located in Southeast Asia, between India and Thailand, more or less, and it's a country that's suffered from a lot of political and economic problems in recent history. But most recently this year on February 1st, the military in Myanmar issued a coup d’état, which we also know is a military coup. And basically, what happened is on February 1st they deposed the ruling party which is the National League for Democracy, also known as the NLD, and the NLD won in a landslide in the last election that occurred in November 2020. They were deposed by the Tatmadaw, I think is how you say it, which is the military, basically, of Myanmar. And what happened was, like I mentioned, there was a landslide victory and the military didn't like this result and so what they did is they proclaimed a yearlong state of emergency and they moved the power from the current rulers to the Commander-in-Chief of the Defense services of the military. Basically, they declared the results of the election as invalid and they stated their intent to hold a new election at the end of the state of emergency even though the population of Myanmar, they are satisfied with the results. They democratically elected the ruling party and the military says otherwise. They said, “We're going to take over instead.” It's very interesting too because the military coup happened the day before the parliament was supposed to swear in these new members from the election. So of course, right before it’s supposed to be made official, they said, “Aright, let's strike. Let's make our military coup happen now.” And along with that, the President and the State Councilor, they’ve been put under house arrest and been completely frozen out of any power. As you can imagine, the people of the country are not very happy and so, they've taken to the streets in protest every day. They're out there with their own homemade weapons, their own homemade shields, and defenses, and basically, they're fighting the military and the police. As you can imagine, this has resulted in a lot of deaths. Since February, it's resulted in over seven hundred civilians dying—including children—and there have been over three thousand people put in prison for protesting and these numbers are rising every day and it becomes seemingly more and more complicated. So, I know a lot of our listeners are familiar with this sort of feeling with the estallido social that happened in Chile back in 2019 and so, a lot of these memories are fresh in a lot of people's minds.

Paige: Hey, Ian. Did you know besides the podcast, Dynamic English offers one-on-one classes of native teachers from all over the world?

Ian: Really? But isn't it just a bunch of grammar lessons?

Paige: Nope, it's completely discussion-based and focuses on topics the student is interested in.

Ian: That's amazing. But what if I'm not living in Chile?

Paige: No problem. Dynamic does online classes. You can be living anywhere.

Ian: Great, but I'm a little intimidated to take the class alone. Can I join with a friend?

Paige: Of course. Dynamic offers group classes of up to four. Plus, for the next month, Coffee with Gringos listeners get 10% off individual or group classes. So go online to www.dynamicenglish.cl and mention that you are a listener and get your discount.

Ian: Well, I'm sold. Sign me up.

Paige: I didn't realize kind of how big of an impact it has been in life loss. That's really awful to hear is we're in a global pandemic, people are dying all the time. We don't need additional senseless murders going on and as you were speaking, all I can think about being someone that's been in the US for the past year or so is our election. I mean that was very similar where we had an election where there was someone who clearly won and someone who clearly lost, and the loser contended. We had almost kind of a coup on the Capitol the week the winner was supposed to be tapped into power. Luckily in the US, we were able to contain that kind of event but it's sad to hear that across the world that it resulted in something very different and a lot darker. Hopefully, it won't take a whole year to get this military coup over with. Are you hearing anything about any steps to kind of redress this or?

Ian: As of now, it just recently has happened. You know, it's only been a few months which I think is another reason why it's very startling for us to see that just in a few months there are over seven hundred deaths. A lot of these people are, again, just civilians. I've seen videos of the police just shooting at whoever's in the street, whether they're protesting or not. It's really disturbing to see and to talk about another event that's been happening in Myanmar even before this military coup. I mentioned at the top of the podcast that it's a country that's gone through a lot in recent years, and something else that's been going on for the past at least five to six years is there's actually been a genocide going on there as well with some of their people. There's a group of Muslims that live in Myanmar that are known as the Rohingya, or Rohingya. I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correct, but it's a Buddhist majority country, and only a very small portion of the population practices Islam. The government and the majority of the people, they don't take very kindly to the Muslim sect of their population and so what's been happening is the military, especially, they have just been murdering these people in the street and their villages, forcing them to relocate. A big problem was the Rohingya, they've been spilling over into neighboring Bangladesh and Bangladesh is just getting completely overwhelmed by this exodus of the Rohingya trying to escape this genocide. So, I mentioned that just to say that Myanmar is going through a lot right now and while it might seem like something new to hear for a lot of people, the military has been doing this for years and years whether it's in the form of genocide, now we're seeing in the form of the military coup, but it's a scary place to be right now. I feel really bad for the people who are just trying to live their lives, they're trying to practice their democratic rights and just because they live in a country where you have that political instability and you have a military that has more control than it probably should these things can happen in these kinds of countries and kind of like what you mentioned earlier, it's a lucky thing that in a lot of countries we have that infrastructure to where we don't have to worry so much about the military actually performing a coup like in the US. But again, we see that it's very common to happen in these other parts of the world and it's very complicated. I haven't really seen anything that looks positive, unfortunately, and I just hope that these extrajudicial killings don't just keep going on and on until a breaking point is reached. And I hope other countries get involved as well. I also don't see that there's been a lot of help from outside countries. I know there have been world leaders denouncing those actions but that's really just using words instead of actions. So, I think it'll be interesting to see if the world kind of wakes up more to what's happening there, and hopefully some actions will be taken to protect the people to put some more accountability towards the military, especially that is doing so much harm there in there in Myanmar.

Paige: It's a difficult situation. Unfortunately, I think many people aren't paying attention because there's just so much going on in their own area. So, I think, unfortunately, it's probably not top on a lot of world leaders’ list to address another country's issues. So, I think it's a shame that it's happening during this time where countries are just too busy trying to combat this pandemic that they probably can't intervene and do anything really substantial. So outside influence is probably not going to be soon would be my guess. So hopefully some of these protesters in the country and leaders there can hopefully create their own change, but yeah pretty awful, Ian.

Ian: Yeah, pretty awful and it's all happening during a world pandemic as well. We always have that as sort of the underlining addition to everything that's happening. So, it's a very difficult time and again I hope these changes are made to put the democratically elected leaders back in power since they won as it seems fair and square and, again, put some accountability to the military which is basically doing whatever they want and killing people without any reason.

Paige: Absolutely and it is also such a shame because I had a really good friend in college who lived in Cambodia and one of her favorite places to go was this country. She said it was so beautiful and it's a really amazing place to go and so it is a shame that this kind of stuff happens that people probably won't want to go there anytime soon because it's so dangerous. And that's a shame because obviously tourism helps the economy and helps everyone and puts more watchdogs in that area if you having more foreigners go there. So, it's a bummer to hear that but in Chile, people protested and they got change. Like, there's a new constitution being drafted this year so I think hopefully they'll have the same effect with their efforts.

Ian: That's a great point to bring up. I think while things look pretty grim, pretty dark, I do want to stay positive, and hopefully, by the end of this, there will be a good result that will result in maybe more rights, maybe again, the return of that democratically elected power. So, all we can really do is stay positive, hope that it gets better, but also lean on world leaders to influence that and really help as well. You know, stay informed, help in any way you can. Listeners, again thank you for joining us and as always, check out that audio guide and transcript online at www.dynamicenglish.cl Thanks for listening.

Paige: We'll see you next time.

Ian: “Coffee with Gringos” officially has over one hundred episodes and we are among the “Top Podcasts in Chile”. And that’s thanks to you. But we are always working to grow our audience so make sure to rate sure to rate, review and share us.  

Key Vocabulary, Phrases & Slang:

 1.     military coup (noun): sudden, violent, and illegal seizure of power from a government by the military.

a.     The military coup took place a few months ago in Myanmar.

2.     to depose (verb): to remove someone from office suddenly and forcefully.

a.     The leader was deposed from office and now is under house arrest.

3.     to win in a landslide (idiom): to win by a large difference or margin.

a.     The new political party won in a landslide and will come into power next year.

4.     to swear in (phrasal verb): to officially admit someone to a particular office or position.

a.     We want to swear in the new leaders before the end of the next year.

5.     senseless (adjective): pointless; without reason.

a.     The military is committing senseless killings against protestors.

6.     to contend (verb): to compete or challenge.

a.     The opposing party wants to contend with the results of the election.

7.     civilian (noun): a person who is not in the military or the police.

a.     There are hundreds of civilian deaths caused by the military.

8.     genocide (noun): the intentional killing of a large number of people from a particular nation or religious group.

a.     The genocide of the Rohingya people in Myanmar is terrible.

9.     sect (noun): a group of people with somewhat different religious beliefs from the larger group to which they belong.

a.     There are many different religious sects that exist within Islam and Buddhism.

10.  exodus (noun): a mass departure of people from one place to another.

a.     The Rohingya exodus is causing many people to leave Myanmar for Bangladesh.

11.  extrajudicial (adjective): not legally authorized.

a.     The extrajudicial killings have been happening for years.

12.  to denounce (verb): to publicly declare something to be wrong or evil.

a.     We need more world leaders to denounce what is happening in Myanmar.

13.  to intervene (verb): to come between or interrupt something.

a.     I hope that world leaders will intervene and stop the horrible events that are happening there.

14.  watchdog (noun): a person or group that monitors the practices of a government in relation to its people.

a.     There are several watchdog groups in the country observing military crimes.

15.  grim (adjective): dark; depressing.

a.     The situation is grim right now but I hope things will improve soon.