Human rights campaigner and writer Igor Blazevic sits down with Mizzima Editor Sein Win to discuss the challenges the Spring Revolution players face in ousting the military junta from power.

Mizzima: The Myanmar coup took place almost two years ago. When you look back, how do you view developments in 2022?

Igor Blazevic: When we look back, in a certain way everybody in the international community expected that sooner or later the military junta will supress the popular uprising against the junta. And the huge impressive achievement of the people of Myanmar is that the junta has not been able to suppress the popular uprising and the resistance.

When we look at recent history there have been a lot of huge uprisings against military dictatorships by people in their country. We can look at Hong Kong, we can look at Belarus, and when you see there basically the regime in a similar way like Myanmar have used extreme brutal violence and after three or four months the regimes by using brutal violence have suppressed resistance.

In Myanmar that didn’t happen. In Myanmar people have shown extraordinary resilience, extraordinary determination and we are now in a situation in which the junta is not able to beat the people, people are not able to defeat the junta, so in 2022 put us in a situation which I call the negative equilibrium - people cannot defeat the junta and the junta cannot defeat the people, so it is very destructive, very destructive because the junta is using systematic destruction of everything in order to prevail.

And now what is important is where the tipping point will come, we can have negative equilibrium, it can go one direction, it can go and it can go the other direction, and the next year (2023) it will be important to see which way it will go. It is very destructive but at the same time it is impressive in how the people of Myanmar are defending themselves.

Mizzima: I like the word you used, negative equilibrium, and it is devastating and also a lot of war crimes, the torture, they do everything to suppress the people’s uprising. On the other hand, they are planning to go for an election in 2023, it is like an exit strategy for Min Aung Hlaing. What are the tactics that they have been using to counter the Spring Revolution?

Blazevic: I think that in this moment, the junta has a very clear strategy, which has a couple of elements. One side of this strategy is not to fight the military offence but to fight the civilian population. Traditionally, this has always been the military tactic of the junta with the Four Cuts Policy. Now this strategy is even more clarified in the junta’s minds because of the Russian assistance because this is a typical Russian military strategy. Russia does not fight the armed opponent. Russia fights the civilian population. If somebody looks at how Russian was conducting the war in Chechnya, how Russia was helping Assad (of Syria) survive, how Russia is today fighting in Ukraine, it was always systematic mass scale hitting on the civilian population. And this is now what the (Myanmar) junta is doing. By doing that the junta is intentionally creating a huge humanitarian disaster. So, this is not a secondary consequence of the war, this is the primary goal of the junta military strategy to create a huge humanitarian burden, a crisis, a real humanitarian crisis, on the other side burden for every single stakeholder in Myanmar who is challenging the junta.

So, this is one side. On the other side of that strategy are extremely problematic figures like (Nippon Foundation Chairman) Sasakawa but also other donor and international players who are approaching ethnic stakeholders with the carrot of humanitarian aid and saying to them “Hey, if you do even a temporary ceasefire with the junta, you will be able to get the humanitarian aid”. So, on one side we are seeing this heavy international stick hitting the people of Myanmar and on the other we see a very dirty misuse of humanitarian aid for political purposes in order to break the alliance of forces against the junta. And if you are a stakeholder who is opposing the junta because you don’t want the junta, you don’t like the junta, but at the same time you have 10,000, 20,000, 100, 000, half a million desperate population then you are seriously thinking what sort of a choice should I make.

So, on the one side we have now a very problematic convergence of the Russian military strategy which is targeting the civilian population and a very, very dirty game of the humanitarian aid that basically can lead the current situation into what I call a domino effect. If one stakeholder accepts a temporary ceasefire then the other stakeholders are looking and thinking maybe we should do the same, if the second accept it we can get a domino, in which the final purpose is to cut the Kachin from the Sagaing, Arakan (Rakhine) from the Sagaing, and achieve as many ceasefires so that the junta can use all of its military power to crush the Sagaing and Magway.

So, this is the strategy and in this strategy the elections are just a smokebomb, they have thrown the elections, they are preparing themselves systematically for elections and they might use it but they might now use it, they are having it in their cards and they are deciding when they will use their card. But at this moment because they have thrown this smokebomb in front of the stage, it looks to me like a false attack. When you want to defeat your opponent, then you create this false attack, the opponent moves all its forces there, then you come from the back.

So, elections are something like a false attack, a lot of our attention, from the civil society and the population is moving in the direction of the elections but at the same time, we are becoming weak in the back from our alliance. And I say we need to prepare ourselves for elections, but at the same time, we need to see where the main threat is coming, and the main threat is coming in a breaking and trying to split the alliance that was standing, is standing, behind the Spring Revolution.

Mizzima: So, the junta basic tactic is still divide-and-conquer?

Blazevic: Still.

Mizzima: So, whenever we have divide-and-rule disunity can happen. When we look at the National Unity Government (NUG), how do you see that? There is some concern about the disunity in the NUG, and disunity in the ethnic alliances. What do you think?

Blazevic: I think probably the most important thing is that we need informal dialogue between the key stakeholders. The Myanmar revolution was run by the many, many stakeholders, and that is giving us strength to the Spring Revolution because so many social forces are giving their contribution. But at the end of the day, the war, because we are in the middle of the war, war is decided by how much military power one side has and the other side hasn’t. And when we look from that perspective, in Myanmar there are a couple of key stakeholders from that point of view. They are the NUG and its capacity to have the PDF forces, it is Kachin, Karen, Karenni and Arakan, because they are the backbone of the current resistance against the junta military war against the people of the country. And I think these stakeholders need to have a lot of informal dialogue in order to recreate a clear common understanding.

And we need to be frank and clear what the underlying problem of this alliance is. The underlying problem is not necessarily the grievances of the ethnic stakeholders vis-à-vis the NLD (National League for Democracy), the NLD has made a lot of mistakes before. The underlying grievances, who has done what in the past is a part of the problem. But a much bigger problem is the ethnic stakeholders for 70 years have a very clear political goal, they want self-determination.

The Spring Revolution is fighting for something else. The Spring Revolution is not fighting for self-determination. The Spring Revolution is fighting for the military outside of the politics, military outside of the economy, and to bring back democracy. In the meantime, the Spring Revolution has accepted the Federal principle but has not made a clear political pledge, not only federal but also self-determination. And because we have these two basically different political goals, we need to make a compromise between them, we need the political courage of the players on all sides that we come together and you will get what you want, you have been fighting for 70 years, we will get removing the military from politics and the economy, lets talk about how we compromise these two different principles.

And it seems to me that we are now unfortunately in a situation where we lack a little bit of leadership, and we lack a bit of critical political courage to make a hard decision. And I hope somebody will do it in order to reunite politically the forces, because if you are reunited politically, then we will be much stronger on the military field. They will also be much stronger vis-a-vis the international community because we can stand as the NUG, as a Kachin, as a Karen, as a Chin, as a Karenni, as an Arakan, say we are together, we are together and you as international players must stand with us.

But when we go there separately, unilaterally on our own, then we look like a disunited force, which means - why should somebody try to understand the mess of Myanmar in which ten different players are asking ten different things?

Mizzima: Very recently the United States passed the National Defence Authorization Act (NDAA). Burma is a part of the NDAA. It is to support and help the Burmese people in terms of the revolution and organization such as the NUG and others. How can we expect this to be helpful to the Burmese revolution?

Blazevic: So, it is good, it is good, it is giving certain additional strengths. If we have been talking before about this balance, this a little bit giving the strength on our side. But there are two important things we should not overlook. Nothing which is happening abroad, nothing which is happening internationally, will decide how the conflict and struggle in Myanmar will finish. This will be decided by the domestic forces. That will decide.

So, what we talked about before regarding political unity – this will be much more important than anything. On the other side, Burma is having a few positive things. It has an extra dimension – the NUG, NUCC, etc.

The key institutions that have been mentioned there, the legitimate bodies of Myanmar. And it was mentioned that the junta was not a partner of the United States and cannot be involved in any way with any sort of aid coming with US money. It was other aspects of the assistance so all these things are adding strength to our side. This is a law, not an executive decision, this is a law which is in an executive implementing policy. We still need to a lot of advocacy with the US government because now the war is giving us good wins but in order to use these wins we need to proceed in a systematic way.

Mizzima: And also we need political unity.

Blazevic: We need political unity.

Mizzima: For that political unity we need to talk to each other behind the stage.

Blazevic: We need to talk to understand the profound demands of the key stakeholders and you need to make a credible pledge one to another, what you want is a legitimate demand and you will have it. And once we have a new future Myanmar there will be federalism, there will be self-determination, there will be opportunity for the ethnic stakeholders to raise their children in their own language, in their own schools, to govern their own territories. At the same time there will be a very clear pledge for individual human rights accepted everywhere in the country.

We also, I believe, need to make a social economic justice pledge with people of Myanmar. People of Myanmar are exploited for decades by the predatory junta for using all wealth of the country to buy the jets for huge amount of money that are then bombing people. They are taking all the wealth of the money for luxury for their families, their spoilt children, so we need to make a pledge to the people that in the future, the revenues from the oil the gas and natural resources will go into the education, go into the health care, will go into the burnt villages, it will go to recover the life of the political prisoners, we need to do this social economic promise to the people of the country that the future gives something to them.

Mizzima: That is quite a lot to do.

Blazevic: I think the junta will continue to destroy in order to defeat. So, their strategy of victory is what Assad has done in Syria – win through total destruction. We need to create enough strong political force to be transformed into a strong enough military force which will essentially bleed the military into total weakness, which will then create the breakup of the junta and we need this political unity in order to be a strong partner of the international community in which we will be able to make clear demands. That is what we need from the political unity. This political unity will represent the will of the people. And then the international players will not be able to play their own divide and exploit game with Myanmar. We have a lot predators around Myanmar, which also play this divide and destroy game.