Richard C. PaddockJan.
15, 2022, 10:11
a.m. ET
The
schoolteacher had just gotten out of bed when four Myanmar army soldiers
pounded on her door. Her electricity payment was overdue, they said, and
ordered her to pay it immediately at the government power company office.
The teacher,
Daw Thida Pyone, asked what would happen if she refused. “One soldier pointed
his gun at me and said, ‘If you choose your money over your life, then don’t go
pay the bill,’” she recounted.
She was so
frightened she got goose bumps. She grabbed her money and went straight to the
payment office, not even taking time to change out of her yellow and pink
pajamas.
After the
Myanmar military seized power in a Feb. 1 coup, millions of people walked off
their jobs in protest. Millions also began refusing to pay for electricity, an act of civil disobedience aimed
at depriving the junta of a crucial source of revenue.
Experts
doubt that these efforts alone can bring down the regime. But eleven months
after the coup, the military appears so desperate for cash that its soldiers
have begun acting as debt collectors.
For weeks,
residents say, troops have been going door to door alongside power company
workers to extract payments in major urban areas, including the nation’s two
largest cities, Yangon and Mandalay.
The
soldier’s threat to Ms. Thida Pyone was part of a wider, violent crackdown as
the regime has tried to crush street protests and the civil disobedience
movement. Soldiers and the police have killed at least 1,466 civilians, including nearly 200 who died
during torture at interrogation centers, according to the Assistance
Association for Political Prisoners. At least 85 young protesters were shot in the head at
demonstrations, the rights group said.
The coup and
subsequent crackdown also threw the nation’s economy into crisis as millions
left their jobs in protest, including doctors, engineers, bank staff, power
company employees and railway workers. Most have not returned.
The economy
had previously been projected to grow in 2021, but with the coup and the
Covid-19 pandemic, the World Bank estimates that it contracted by more than 18
percent instead.
The United
Nations Development Program predicts that urban poverty rates will triple by
early 2022, according to a December report based
on a survey of 1,200 households.
“A slide
into poverty of this scale could mean the disappearance of the middle class — a
bad omen for any rapid recovery from this crisis,” Kanni Wignaraja, director of
the agency’s bureau for Asia and the Pacific, said in a statement
accompanying the report.
Myanmar’s
currency, the kyat, has plummeted since the coup to less than half its previous
value, driving up prices for imports such as fuel and cooking oil.
Cash remains
in short supply as people, lacking confidence in the banks, hoard kyat. Banks
are no longer stocking even a handful of
A.T.M.s. Customers who want their money must obtain a token online or make
an appointment by phone; both are almost impossible to do. Most people get cash
from their accounts by transferring it to a broker and paying a commission of
as much as 7 percent.
After a
previous military regime began opening the country in 2010, Myanmar saw
economic growth with increased international investment and a higher standard
of living. The coup has undone this progress.
“In the past
10 months, the country has lost all its gains from the past 10 years,” said U
Hein Maung, an economist based in Myanmar. “The cost of doing business has
increased substantially. There is a booming informal economy of drug
trafficking, illegal logging, money laundering and other illegal businesses.”
A decline in
electricity payments, as well as tax revenues and international development
assistance, has cost the regime about a third of the revenue that the previous
government used to receive, he said.
Many public
services, like health care and schools, are barely functioning, and the regime
has halted many longer-term programs reliant on state funding, such as
infrastructure projects.
“They are in
zombie mode,” Mr. Hein Maung said. “They are functioning in the minimum viable
way.”
Nevertheless,
the military is in a better position than the public to withstand the downturn.
“The
military has its own businesses and banks,” he said. “They can survive despite
the fact that everything else has collapsed. And they have the guns, of
course.”
Myanmar’s
shadow opposition government, the National Unity Government, has urged the
public to stop paying for electricity. In September, it said that 97 percent of
people in Mandalay and 98 percent in Yangon had done so, costing the regime $1
billion by that point.
Ko Si Thu
Aung, 24, who sells vintage clothes online, had not paid his bill since
February in support of the civil disobedience movement. But on Christmas Day,
soldiers came to his home and cut the power line. After two days without
electricity, he decided he had no choice.
“If there is
no electricity, I can’t work,” he said as he stood in line with more than 300
others waiting to pay their bills at the office of the Mandalay Electricity
Supply Cooperative. “I feel bad because our money will become bullets to kill
people.”
He said he
would atone by donating more than the amount of his electricity payment to the
People’s Defense Force, an anti-regime militia formed since the coup.
Understanding the Coup in Myanmar
Card 1 of 5
A recent military coup. Following a military coup on Feb. 1, 2021, unrest gripped Myanmar. Peaceful pro-democracy demonstrations gave way
to insurgent uprisings against the Tatmadaw, the
country’s military, which ousted the country’s civilian leader, Daw Aung San
Suu Kyi.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is a polarizing figure. The daughter of a hero of Myanmar’s independence, Ms. Aung
San Suu Kyi remains very popular at home. Internationally, her reputation has been tarnished by
her recent cooperation with the same
military generals who ousted her.
The coup ended a short span of quasi-democracy. In 2011, the Tatmadaw implemented parliamentary
elections and other reforms. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi came to power
as state councillor in 2016, becoming the country’s de facto head of
government.
The coup was preceded by a contested election. In the Nov. 8 election, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party
won 83 percent of the body’s available seats. The military, whose
proxy party suffered a crushing defeat, refused to accept the results of the
vote.
Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi faces years in prison. The ousted leader has been sentenced to a total
of six years in prison so far, with many more charges pending against her. The
U.N., foreign governments and Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s defenders have described the charges as
politically motivated.
Opponents of
the regime have also targeted lesser revenue sources, such as motor vehicle
payments, by not renewing driver’s licenses or car registration. Soldiers have
begun trying to collect more money by stopping drivers at random and inspecting
their documents.
And revenue
from the state-run lottery dropped to nearly zero after most of the public
stopped buying tickets.
Opponents
also have mounted a boycott against companies owned by the military, which
operates two vast conglomerates with
more than 120 subsidiaries. Among those affected are military-owned beer
producers, banks, a cigarette manufacturer, tourist hotels, an insurance
company and the cellphone company Mytel, a joint venture with Vietnam’s defense
ministry.
In Mandalay,
where the power goes out every day for hours at a time, the regime’s strong-arm
campaign to collect electricity payments began in October.
Power
outages were common before the coup but recently have become longer and more
frequent. The energy ministry blames the outages in part on a fourfold increase
in the price of imported natural gas.
Sometimes,
in their effort to collect payment, troops sever the cables supplying power to
individual homes.
Dr. Wai Phyo
Aung, 36, a Mandalay dentist, said soldiers came to his neighborhood at the end
December and cut the power lines of residents with the largest outstanding
bills. One man who took a photo of a soldier cutting a cable was arrested, he
said.
But he said
he would refuse to give the regime any money. He has not paid his bill since
the coup.
“If they
come to my house and cut the electricity, I don’t care,” he said. “I will never
pay the bill. I don’t care even if they kill me. I won’t let my money kill
citizens and feed the war dogs.”
Ms. Thida
Pyone, 39, who stood in the payment line in her pajamas, said she felt that she
had no choice.
“They are
threatening people in all possible ways,” she said. “I feel guilty for paying
the bill, but I am afraid they will kill me.”
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