Mon, 8 March 2021
On February 1, Burma’s military stormed the country’s capital, arrested its elected leaders, and declared a military state of emergency. Since then, protesters throughout Burma (also known as Myanmar) have taken to the streets, even as the military threatens more violence. Dozens of people have been shot and killed by the military junta, and the crackdown has been compared to the 1989 protests and massacre in China’s Tiananmen Square. Burma was supposed to be a transitioning democracy, and the power-sharing agreement between its military and civilian leadership was regarded as one of the Obama Administration’s major foreign policy achievements. So, what went wrong? In this episode, we talk with former US Ambassador to Malaysia Joseph Yun and Thant Myint-U, a former diplomat, historian and author, about what fueled the coup and what’s different about this protest movement.
Guests: Joseph Yun, former US ambassador to Malaysia and former US Special Representative for North Korea Policy Thant Myint-U, historian, conservationist, former diplomat, and author of many books including “The Hidden History of Burma: Race, Capitalism, and the Crisis of Democracy in the 21st Century”
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