The United States on Thursday announced new sanctions against Myanmar’s military leaders who directed the coup, their business interest as well as their close family members after the military what it said overthrew the democratically elected government.
The day before, US President Joe Biden had approved a new executive order allowing the government sanctions against Myanmar military and take steps to prevent the generals from improperly having access to the one billion dollars of the country’s funds held in the United States.
Although Biden and his administration stressed that the sanctions will only target Myanmar’s military leaders, concern remains that such measures could impact the lives of innocent people. The US had imposed sanctions against the military that ruled Myanmar in the 1990s and 2000s that proved to have enormously impacted the lives of ordinary citizens.
Analysts in recent years have portrayed Suu Kyi as a “fallen angel” — an arrogant and power-hungry politician who betrayed her human rights supporters and presided over one of the worst contemporary crimes against humanity in 2017. In June that year alone, the Myanmar military forced to flee more than seven and a half lakh Rohingya Muslims from its western Rakhine state to neighbouring Bangladesh. The military has been accused of mass killings and rape of Rohingya women. Currently, over one million Rohingya refugees are living in Bangladesh.
She further infuriated supporters by going to Hague in 2019 to defend the same military that had committed genocide. While supporters around the world saw Suu Kyi as a Nobel Peace Prize winning human rights defender, in reality she had always stressed law and order over social justice.
Today, nothing would serve Chinese interests more than new US-led efforts to isolate Myanmar, which serves China as a strategic gateway to the Indian Ocean and an important source of natural resources.
The US policymakers must not ignore how often American sanctions against other countries have worked to China’s trade and investment advantages. They should perhaps be worried by how sanctions have forced Russia to turn to China.
Meanwhile, China and Russia have also blocked the 15-member UN Security Council from condemning the military coup in Myanmar. India and Japan have refrained from condemning Myanmar’s military government since they have huge investment there.
In this light, we think the United States must take a prudent approach towards Myanmar. We feared for the millions who had been descending into poverty, as half of the Myanmar people reportedly live far below the poverty line..
