For veterans of our constitutional wars, Canada’s challenges in overcoming regional tensions appear trivial, when compared to the enormous political mountain to be climbed in uniting dozens of ethnic communities, many of whom do not share a common language. Many Canadians are involved in assisting their struggle, from legal experts to advisers on human rights. The People’s Defense Forces, as the forces battling the junta are known, have seized territory, attacked military bases and stimulated a stream of defections from the army. An enemy who firebombs villages conducts summary executions of dozens of civilians and now, in unconfirmed reports, is using Russian-supplied chemical weapons.ĭespite their daunting odds, the fusion of battle-hardened ethnic armies with thousands of young civilian volunteers has succeeded in pushing back the junta. As dubious as their prospects seemed a year ago, the Myanmar people - like the Ukrainians - have shown almost incredible levels of courage and resilience in battling a heavily armed opponent. Among the projects they are tackling is creating a corruption-free federal justice system, finding consensus on a new national constitution and rebuilding a shattered economy.įirst, they must defeat the bloody junta, and its Russian backers.
Now a national government-in-waiting led by Duwa Lashi La - its acting president and a former leader of one of the strongest ethnic states, Kachin - offers the prospect of a country at peace, building a sustainable national unity for the first time since the British left in 1948. Some have been under the effective control of rebel armies for decades. The country speaks more languages than all of Europe, and has many more distinct ethnic communities. Myanmar is now in the process of creating an inclusive national government that may be able to unite all of their peoples - including the previously suppressed Rohingya people - in a single federal state. Politicians representing the Bamar majority have united with those from the ethnic communities. For the first time in Myanmar’s history - formerly the British colony of Burma - the NUG also includes senior ministers from ethnic communities, some of whom have fought the country’s army for more than half a century.
The NUG is composed, in part, of elected MPs from Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy and various other parties. In February, the acting president of Myanmar’s National Unity Government (NUG) offered a state of the union address, one year after the latest bloody military coup by the country’s generals in 2021. No, these courageous soldiers are not Ukrainians - they are citizens of Myanmar. Now, these young activist soldiers have fled the cities for the countryside, where after scant military training they face the brutality of Russian attack helicopters, MiG fighter jets and heavy artillery.
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