Editorial: A Desperate Regime Resorts to Known Playbook’s Dirty Tricks

By Admin 21 May 2024

The Myanmar military has never been reluctant to play dirty tricks to protect its interests and maintain its grip on power. One of the oldest tricks in its playbook has been to incite racial and sectarian violence between different groups in order to divide and rule them.

Its ploys to create instability in ethnic states include playing race and religion cards, offering ethnic leaders massive incentives to side with it, and driving a wedge within and between ethnic armed organisations, and between ethnic armed organisations and local people.

After losing 55 towns and much more territory across the country over the past three years in the popular armed revolt, the junta is resorting to its old tricks.

Regime lobbyists have been waging organised propaganda warfare on social media, creating incendiary posts designed to cause conflicts between groups of different races and religions.

The regime has been working to provoke racial and sectarian strife in places where resistance groups have grown significantly since the 2021 coup, in the hope that such conflicts could impede or even halt the resistance attacks.

In Sagaing Region, which has become a hotbed of post-coup resistance to military rule, the regime is attempting to incite hatred between the ethnic Kachin armed group, the Kachin Independence Army, and ethnic Shanni people.

It is also stoking tensions between ethnic Karenni and Pa-O people.

After losing large swaths of territory in Arakan State over the past five months, the regime is taking systematic steps to provoke anew inter-communal violence between the Arakanese and Muslim communities in Arakan State.

It has orchestrated Muslim protests against the Arakkha Army (AA) in townships it still controls. The regime, its Muslim conscripts and allied Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) and Arakan Rohingya Army (ARA) forces carried out arson attacks on the houses of non-Muslim residents in Buthidaung Town last month.
 
“Whenever the terrorist, fascist military regime tries to cover up its defeats on the Arakan front, it has always played lowly and dirty political ploys against our society,” said AA spokesman U Khaing Thukha.

After the regime lost the whole of Paletwa Township in neighbouring Chin State, it spread hate speech and propaganda designed to provoke racial tensions between the AA and ethnic Chin people.

Elsewhere in the country, the regime has armed Pyu Saw Htee groups and militias to attack anti- regime forces. In Arakan State, it is using armed Muslim groups and Muslim conscripts to attack the AA and create racial conflicts.

The regime has carried out indiscriminate air and artillery attacks in Arakan State in violation of international law, killing and wounding civilians including women and children, and destroying their property. The regime views all the local people as its enemy.

It is also promoting the view that non-Arakanese people living in Arakan State are suffering due to the AA. Its plan is simple — to reap benefits from a fight between the two communities.

Myanmar’s military regime is determined to leave a legacy of racial and religious conflicts in Arakan State even if it is forced to leave the state. DMG therefore urges people of all faiths and good faith to exercise restraint, take a deep breath, and avoid falling for the junta’s old tricks.