MYANMAR IN CRISIS Amid the Struggle for Democracy, Where Do the Rohingya Belong? BY CAMERON FREEMAN Several weeks ago, Myanmar’s military abducted David Stanley’s uncle. “Hopefully he’s still alive,” Stanley said. Stanley, a Yale sophomore raised in Myanmar, fled the country as a child in 2007. He and his family hid in Malaysia for two and a half years before receiving asylum in the United States through the United Nations. “He is an artist, so he used his platform to speak out against the military junta,” Stanley said. “And we haven’t heard from him. And we’re very nervous.” On February 1, Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, seized power from the country’s democratically-elected leadership after baseless
claims of election fraud. Though the coup itself was bloodless, the military crackdown on democratic protests in its wake has killed and wounded hundreds. After just a decade of nascent democracy, pre-coup leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy (NLD) party remain immensely popular. The return of military rule represents a disastrous step backward to the merciless pre-democracy junta government Burmese remember all too well. “I remember talking to my dad, he was just distraught because he remembered how awful living under 7
