In Myanmar, the military controls its troopers’ lives, minds and funds

Written by Naomi Conrad and Julia Bayer
The Tatmadaw, Myanmar’s highly effective military, controls each side of its troopers’ lives. And those that go away pay a heavy worth. DW spoke to a few defectors.
As he witnessed the brutal crackdown on unarmed civilians protesting the military’s takeover, the younger lieutenant felt more and more disgusted. Soon after, he left with out saying goodbye to his mother and father, fleeing the nation first on bike after which on foot, aided throughout the border by native villagers.
Along the best way, he caught to smaller roads, fastidiously avoiding checkpoints and detection.

For if caught, he knew he would pay a heavy worth for his desertion: In Myanmar, military defectors are often sentenced to loss of life — which is then commuted to life in jail, because the loss of life penalty has not been carried out in over three many years.
That may, nonetheless, change as the military faces opposition inside its ranks to its energy seize.
Rare perception into Myanmar’s army
The lieutenant is one in all three defectors DW has spoken to in current weeks, exchanging virtually day by day messages with them. The man, who peppers his messages with laughing emojis, is in hiding in India. The different two, each high-ranking officers, are on the run in Myanmar, shifting from one protected home to the subsequent. Their accounts present uncommon perception into an in any other case opaque establishment that’s recognized for committing gross human rights violations towards its personal residents — and reveals the military’s stranglehold on troopers’ lives, minds and, DW has realized, additionally funds.
A soldier makes use of a cell phone as he sits inside a army automobile exterior Myanmar’s Central Bank throughout a protest towards the army coup, in Yangon, Myanmar, February 15, 2021. (Reuters)
The interviews have been carried out by way of messenger apps, together with patchy video and audio calls, on condition that the military’s ongoing web crackdown hampers most communication with the skin world.
DW has not been in a position to independently confirm their accounts, however the interviews corroborate one another in key points. In two circumstances, army identification playing cards have been proven.
Their identities aren’t disclosed on this report attributable to fears for the defectors and their households’ security.
‘Every move monitored’
The three males describe a cloistered, strictly managed life, primarily based on a stringent, overarching hierarchy. Soldiers, they are saying, are required to dwell on military bases and are solely allowed to go away if granted permission by superiors. The military dictates what troopers and their households “wear, say and believe in, even how to decorate your home,” one man mentioned. “They can check your house at any moment,” he added.
The wives of troopers, he explains, aren’t allowed to put on the colour pink, which is related to Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), or spout every other political symbols.
“Everything is monitored,” says one other defector, who was deliberate with every phrase used to recount his expertise. “They want to turn people into robots, who don’t think (for themselves).”
Demonstrators stage a protest towards the army coup in entrance of riot policemen in Yangon, Myanmar Thursday, Feb. 18, 2021. (AP)
A monitoring crew inside the military utilizing Facebook, all three sources say, watches over troopers and their households’ actions, scrutinizing each single like, share and put up. Soldiers, one defector says, have at hand over their log-in particulars for Facebook, together with sign-up telephone numbers.
“If people post political things, they can be arrested and put in jail for three or four weeks,” one defector tells DW. Another says that troopers have been denied promotions after sharing social media posts criticizing the management of the Tatmadaw — as Myanmar’s army is thought — or voicing help for the NLD social gathering.

One man remembers collaborating in a coaching course a number of years in the past, the place officers have been proven learn how to faucet into CCTV and intercept telephone calls utilizing Russian and Chinese expertise — though he didn’t know the extent of surveillance.
Low-ranking troopers, one defector says, have been handled “like slaves,” with their wives pressured to scrub high-ranking officers’ houses with out pay. Another mentioned he had witnessed a superior asking the spouse of a low-ranking soldier to provide him a therapeutic massage. He says the lady acquiesced, understanding that refusing may have destructive repercussions for her husband.
Anti-Muslim propaganda
According to DW’s three sources, troopers are fed a gentle stream of propaganda that views the Tatmadaw because the guardian of the embattled Buddhist nation of Myanmar. The enemies, in line with this propaganda, are made up of a shadowy cabal of Muslims, Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD social gathering, who’re bent on destroying the Buddhist nation.
It’s an ideology that has been cast in a decades-long, at instances brutal battle towards a myriad of ethnic insurgencies which have been preventing for independence from the Burmese majority and, at instances, one another.
In Myanmar, a state with 135 totally different ethnic teams, the place roughly 90% of the inhabitants adheres to Buddhism, politics and faith are carefully interwoven. Generals have lengthy constructed pagodas, erected Buddha statues, and paid homage to influential monks to legitimize their declare to energy as a unifying power. Anti-Muslim sentiments are widespread, which the Tatmadaw is adept at exploiting for political capital.
And this anti-Muslim, Buddhism-first propaganda is instilled into troopers of all ranks. Soldiers, one supply says, are being “brainwashed” into shopping for the military’s worldview. Another mentioned whereas he didn’t imagine the propaganda, he didn’t converse out towards it, for concern of being punished. One defector recalled how he had been verbally abused when he dared to query the narrative that Rohingya — a Muslim minority lengthy denied full citizenship rights — have been “terrorists” bent on destroying the nation and that that they had no place in Myanmar.One of the boys, who, like many officers hails from a army household and had grown up on a military base, mentioned that he had lengthy believed the Tatmadaw’s propaganda: When pals dared to query the military, he would defend the army, recalling his anger at anybody who spoke negatively of the establishment he had been taught to revere.
His views, he mentioned, solely modified following the coup when he witnessed the military’s crackdown on peaceable protesters — unarmed males, girls and kids that the military labels “terrorists.”
Myanmar military is a state inside the state
The Tatmadaw’s outsized position is intertwined inside Myanmar’s political and financial life — a profitable benefit that succeeded colonial rule.
Following independence from Britain in 1948, a army junta took management in 1962, ushering in a chronic interval of iron-fisted rule characterised by strict censorship, imprisonment of opponents and worldwide isolation.
While in energy, the military — in addition to particular person officers and their households — amassed nice wealth. This included land, financial and monetary property.
The generals solely eased their grip on energy in 2010, which culminated in elections that allowed for Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD social gathering to type a authorities.
Even after ceding some management to elected politicians, it continues to play an enormous position in each the political and financial discipline: The structure ensures the army 25% of parliament seats, that means that the military can block any constitutional amendments it dislikes.
It additionally retains management of essential ministries, together with protection and residential affairs.
Likewise, it continues to personal and run a myriad of profitable enterprise pursuits with none unbiased oversight. The Tatmadaw runs its personal faculties, universities, hospitals and courtroom system.
In brief: The military has established what’s principally a strong state inside the state. And, for the reason that coup, the military is now formally again in energy.
In absolute phrases, the Tatmadaw, knowledgeable military, is the eleventh largest military on this planet, with some 406,000 troopers in lively obligation as of 2019, in line with the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
Economic exploitation
The Tatmadaw not solely tries to regulate troopers’ methods of pondering — but additionally their funds. Military personnel of all ranks, DW has realized, are pressured to help military-owned firms by way of two necessary schemes: This consists of, the three defectors say, requiring troopers to enroll in a life insurance coverage coverage with Aung Myint Moh Min Insurance Company Ltd. The coverage, which they’re pressured to pick, renews routinely each 5 years — with no method for troopers to opt-out. ­­
The firm is an alleged subsidiary of one of many army’s two conglomerates, Myanmar Economic Holding (MEC) and Myanmar Economic Holding Limited (MEHL), in line with a 2019 UN report. These conglomerates, profit each the Tatmadaw and high-ranking particular person officers and their households.
The firm didn’t reply to DW’s requests for remark.
Soldiers are additionally pressured to make necessary funds into MEC and MEHL, that are transformed into shares. In return, troopers obtain a small dividend yearly, defectors say.
It is probably going a approach to each generate revenues for the army and particular person generals — while shopping for loyalty. Many high-ranking officers upon retirement are sometimes awarded posts within the two holdings, their subsidiaries and affiliated firms. Others are given posts within the civilian administration.
The military doesn’t reply kindly to those that try to go away its fold. One of the defectors tells DW that troopers “cannot leave the army.”
In concept, one other defined, troopers can submit a letter of resignation after 10 years. “But that is only in the law,” he defined drily. “In practice, it is not easy and it takes three to four years to submit the process (of leaving the army).” And even then, he added, it was not a on condition that the military would let the soldier go.
He says he regrets his determination to affix the military within the first place.
The Myanmar Embassy in Berlin didn’t reply to DW’s request for remark.
Tatmadaw looking down defectors?
All three males are conscious of the Tatmadaw’s attain, as the military pursues defectors. One man says he had heard from a contact within the Tatmadaw’s headquarters that it had compiled an inventory of some 300 defectors and was going after them and their households. It was, he says, “a manhunt.”
DW can’t confirm the declare, nonetheless, on condition that the authorities have compiled a wished checklist of activists and journalists that’s broadcast each night time on state tv, it’s doubtless that the identical is going on with military defectors.
One man describes how his household receives threatening telephone calls. “They said: Where is your son? If you support him, you will get arrested.” Soon after, he severed all communication together with his household, fearing for his or her security.
Another supply refuses to acknowledge whether or not he’s nonetheless in touch together with his household, fearing it might danger their security.
Despite all of the excessive dangers, one defector has no regrets. Life on the run and hiding in a special home every night time to maintain protected is, for him, a consequence of sustaining integrity. He stands by his determination to go away the military he had served for therefore a few years, saying he didn’t need his future kids to “think I did nothing to stop this illegal coup.”