As everyone was absorbing the Reserve Bank’s decision to raise interest rates on Tuesday evening, one economist received something of a rock-star reception. Sean Turnell, the former senior economic advisor to deposed Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi and one-time jailbird on spurious espionage charges, was in demand in Sydney’s inner west for photographs and autographs in his prison memoirs.
Five years have passed since the coup that tore Myanmar asunder, when Min Aung Hlaing’s junta ousted a fledgling if flawed democracy and plunged the country into a protracted and deadly civil war. A conflict in our backyard that has been forgotten.
It has killed thousands, although given the country has returned to an information black hole the true toll is inexact. The UN estimates 5.2 million people have been displaced, both internally and across the borders, while food insecurity is acute and military airstrikes hit civilian populations and infrastructure. The coup only exacerbated a refugee crisis and allowed the Myanmar military’s genocide of the Rohingya to continue unchecked.
Then there is the economy. “I guess it’s just a catastrophe,” Turnell told a full house at Tuesday night’s panel discussion and documentary screening at Leichhardt Town Hall.
He said Myanmar’s economy was about half of where “it was meant to be” when the National League for Democracy was in power, and described how every area of policy was dedicated to ensuring the junta had the means to sustain itself and the war on its opponents.
“It’s quite deliberate; they are trying to get as many resources as they can.”
For San May Thu, from the Humanitarian Advisory Group, the greatest challenge is ensuring food can reach people, bypassing a regime that has “restricted and blocked and weaponised” aid. Many working on the ground go to great lengths to evade detection by security forces and can struggle to comply with the requirements of international non-government organisations.
“The community have become the frontline responders,” May said, adding it has been “five years not just of a worsening situation but increasing reliance on the grassroots” for survival.
The Myanmar war is often dismissed or downplayed as an internal conflict, although international actors are invested. China and Russia have sent weapons and fuel, and investment has come from places such as Singapore and India; there are Australian mining interests, too, and at least 10 companies with Australian ties continued operating after the 2021 coup.
“China wants a stable Myanmar, but a weak Myanmar,” Turnell said. He suggested that in the long term, China’s support for the regime will come to haunt it.
Noor Azizah, a refugee and co-founder of the Rohingya Maìyafuìnor Collaborative Network, was more explicit in calling out China’s support for the Myanmar military. She highlighted the oil and gas pipelines built during the Rohingya genocide, which began years before the coup, when agrarian “ancestral knowledge was wiped out”.
“A lot of people in Australia say it doesn’t get the coverage it deserves,” she said, later adding: “This is in the backyard of Sydney.”
Noor, the 2024 NSW Young Woman of the Year, said in the past she had been subjected to discrimination by Myanmar refugees in Australia, but since the coup had bonded with women from other ethnic minorities who had also suffered trauma at the hands of the military.
Migration lawyer Ko Ko Aung cautioned that the diaspora remained disparate, and while there had been fundraising events every Saturday in Sydney for five years, at times the efforts overlapped or proved counterproductive.
“We are not going to overthrow the government from the front line of Sydney,” he smiled. “We have a role. It’s not small. We have to focus on what we want to do.”
While it seems a long way from the Leichhardt Town Hall to the monuments of power in Naypyidaw, Asia Justice and Rights co-founder Patrick Burgess spoke from experience in Indonesia and Timor-Leste about how quickly autocratic countries could change. A military victory appeared less likely than a year ago, but there were pockets of Myanmar where independent governments were being established. Burgess also said change can come from within the regime with the right kinds of pressure.
“If we keep the solidarity going, we will succeed,” he said.
Turnell has reason to worry but said he believed the country would quickly rebound if the war economy was diverted to health, education, infrastructure and banking structures that supported growth.
“If democracy was to return, it would be profitable.”
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