o Engage or Not To Engage with Myanmar’s Criminal Rulers: That Strange Feeling of Déjà Vu by Maung Zarni

In 1974 the first coup regime of the Revolutionary council shed its snakeskin into a socialist constitutional government led by the cadres of whom the military officers were the nucleus.

This faux transformation was accompanied by the officers in green uniform slipping into Myanmar sayong, junking their military ranks and assuming the civilian honorific of “U” (pronounced Oo).

The mastermind behind this performative transformation of the military rule into a pseudo-civilian representative government was the late general Ne Win, the originator of Myanmar’s textbook one-party military rule.

General Ne Win (6 July 1910 – 5 December 2002), who became the Commander in Chief of Myanmar military on 1 Feb 1949 staged the coup on 2 March 1962 and died as U Ne Win, the disgraced Chairman of the Burma Socialist Programme Party on 5 December 2002. This is his obituary.

However, neither Myanmar people nor the outside world, including the Association of South East Asian Nations have been fooled by this charade of military dictators trying to look representatives through various military-centred Constitutions.

We all know Myanmar military – known in Burmese as Tatmadaw or “royal/feudal armed forces” – has ruled the predominantly Buddhist nation made up of very diverse ethnic populations, well, at gun point.

Min Aung Hlaing during the Tatmadaw’s 76th anniversary day on 27 March 2021. Wikipedia Commons

On structural equation of power on most consequential matters such as internal security (pro-democracy activism), border affairs (ethnic relations), and national security, the military retains the ultimate say. The 2008 Constitution, of, for and by the military, is mathematically amendment proof requiring more than 75% votes on any pro-democratic changes to it, in the parliament where 25% of the seats are automatically reserved and allocated to the military officers.

Importantly, there is no sunset clause whereby the generals will phase their anti-democratic presence from the law-making body. For Myanmar’s generals have convinced themselves that only they are qualified to rule – not simply govern – the ethnically diverse nation.

Even the short-lived one-cycle, elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi wasn’t really free from the military’s tight reins.

For Suu Kyi’s popular government was a junior partner in this two-tiered governance of power-sharing. In the second election cycle, the NLD won “a crushing electoral victory” over the military’s proxy Union Solidarity and Development party made up of ex-generals and the military vets of other ranks but proceeded to make a suicidal error of judgment.

In her signature obduracy, Aung San Suu Kyi, who saw and called herself “above the Presidents”, who were her loyal personal Yo-Yos, failed to handle with great tact the biggest snake in national politics, namely Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.

She is not without her responsibility in plunging the country into the abyss of internal fragmentation.

Yangon Myanmar – February 12, 2021: Protesters gather peacefully at University Avenue in Yangon to protest against the military coup, which took place in Myanmar in February 2021. Photo: Carsten Yangon, Shutterstock

The general knows there is a legal target on his back as he is reportedly – and correctly – named as the Number One General responsible for the genocide and crime against humanity in Myanmar’s genocide of Rohingya people, albeit the crime was perpetrated under Aung San Suu Kyi’s State Counsellorship. A magistrate in Argentina has issued an arrest warrant for Myanmar’s #1 general in the Pinochet-style Universal Jurisdiction case last year.

Indeed, Min Aung Hlaing was afraid for his future should the thinkable happen to him: that he is hauled to the Hague like Milosevic for his international crimes. Fear-struck and desperate men in power will do anything, including plunging the country into another cycle of coup-mass revolt, whatever the economic and opportunity costs for the 50-million Myanmar.

Today, popular and expertly discourses put the responsibility for the sordid affairs on Myanmar starting with the 2021 coup on this Myanmar criminal who has usurped power while constructing, once again, the fairy tale of the innocent democratic leader, kept in captivity.

Against this discursive backdrop, policy wonks, Myanmar pundits and ASEAN media outlets discuss President U Min Aung Hlaing’s state visit to neighbouring Thailand.

Myanmar scholar and activist Maung Zarni joined the fray and offers his brutally honest analyses, anchored in his nearly 4-decades of direct political involvement and scholarship in Myanmar affairs. For him, the debate over “to engage or not to engage” with the genocidal regime has become rather worn out since the military-ruled Myanmar was fast-tracked into ASEAN in 1997. He offers his bird eye view, grounded in ugly violent realities of Myanmar, informed by his deep commitment to consistency in global ethics, universal morality and human rights activism.

Listen to the two interviews here:

TRT World Newsmakers, 10 August 2026