By John J. Metzler, February 9, 2025Four years following a Beijing-backed military coup which turned the clock back from an elected, if flawed, democratic government to an authoritarian and corrupt military regime, the Southeast Asian country of Myanmar/aka Burma has sunk into new socio/economic depths.
Significantly, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has demanded that “Myanmar’s military must relinquish power to allow a return to civilian rule through an inclusive democratic transition.”
An official statement adds, “The Secretary-General condemns all forms of violence and calls on all parties to the conflict to exercise maximum restraint, uphold human rights, and prevent further incitement of violence and inter-communal tensions.”
Indeed, the largely Buddhist but hyper-nationalist Myanmar military regime has long been in conflict with Christian minorities and more recently Rohingya Muslims. But widening chaos is destabilizing the region.
A new report by the UN Development Program (UNDP) warns, Myanmar is “facing an unprecedented ‘polycrisis’ marked by economic collapse, intensifying conflict.” The report points to “the bleak picture of a nation in free-fall, with nearly half the population living below the poverty line, essential services crumbling and the economy in disarray.”
It stresses that with no political resolution in sight, the crisis is expected to worsen.
Since 2020, Myanmar’s economy has contracted drastically with Gross Domestic Product (GDP) falling by 9 percent. The national currency the Kyat plummeted from 1,330 Kyat per U.S. dollar in 2021 to 4,520 in 2025, making imports unaffordable and sending inflation soaring.
Nonetheless, the report warns that a booming black market has replaced the formal economy in the resource rich country where, “Myanmar’s illicit economy is thriving and it has become the world’s leading producer of opium and heroin, and one of the largest manufacturers of methamphetamines.”
Burma, a strategic land, borders five countries: India, Bangladesh, Laos, Thailand and China.
Illegal teak lumbering, and a lucrative multi-billion dollar jade industry, remain largely unregulated.
The report cites human trafficking which flourishes along the country’s porous borders. None of this trade is new but is now put on steroids due to the “Chinese connection.” Cross border rackets, gambling and illicit trade have proliferated.
Ongoing and long-running ethnic conflicts have plagued Burma for decades; Yet eight years ago when the government began a systematic program of ethnic cleansing against the Muslim Rohingya minority, people finally took notice. In 2017 more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims were forced out of the country into neighboring Bangladesh creating a humanitarian catastrophe.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres then described the violence as ethnic cleansing.
Back in 1962, Gen. Ne Win led a military overthrow of the government and established the “Burmese Way to Socialism.”
The Myanmar military Tatmandaw, remains an institution not only enforcing internal security but controlling both above board commerce and black-market rackets. For more than a half-century, the country was run by military juntas, largely encouraged or backed by Communist China.
The discredited military finally stepped down and handed power to elected longtime rights advocate Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate.
In 2016, Myanmar’s first democratically elected government in a generation assumed power, for a short interval, that’s until the 2021 overthrow.
Given Burma’s geographic importance to Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative, China tacitly supports the military rulers. Beijing has been coercing the country’s anti-regime ethnic armed militias to strike a peace deal with the junta in a bid to protect Chinese strategic and commercial interests in Myanmar.
Chinese projects such as the Kyaukphyu deep-sea port are key BRI bases.
While Western countries, especially the former colonial power Britain and the United States have striven for human rights accountability in Myanmar, it was only when the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) began to press for reforms was there some glacial movements for change. Moreover, UN Security Council efforts concerning Myanmar over the years have been blocked by both China and Russia.
Hunger is reaching catastrophic levels, and agricultural productivity has declined by 16 percent since 2021.
According to UN agencies, “The situation in Myanmar is in freefall, with nearly 20 million people, a third of the population, expected to need humanitarian aid this year.”
Tom Andrews, the UN’s independent Human Rights expert on Myanmar added, “Junta forces have slaughtered thousands of civilians, bombed and burned villages, and displaced millions of people. More than 20,000 political prisoners remain behind bars.”
As Andrew asserts, “Impunity has enabled a decades-long cycle of violence and oppression in Myanmar. Ultimately, this sad chapter of Myanmar’s history must end with junta leaders being prosecuted for their crimes.” That’s easier said than done.
John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He is the author of Divided Dynamism the Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China (2014). [See pre-2011 Archives]
