Dispatches© BRU News
Myanmar law students are reporting for JURIST on challenges to the rule of law in their country under the military junta that deposed the civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021. Late Sunday, as Category 5 Cyclone Mocha bore down on western Myanmar and Bangladesh, one of our correspondents who must remain anonymous offered her perspective on storms and political change.
It is very very windy here right now. We don’t know what will happen overnight yet. Mostly, following wind, rain, and a storm, electricity cut-off and wifi errors are very common. We lost contact with relatives from Rakhine at 11 am this morning because the electricity is completely cut off over there and MPT mobile phone tower fell down due to wind.
Not about this severe weather, but isn’t it like a coincidence that the Nargis cyclone happened back in May of 2008 in Myanmar [editor’s note: Cyclone Nargis killed an estimated 130,000 people in Myanmar]? Following that, a major political change happened too. That is the referendum of the 2008 constitution that has trapped all of us under the fake democracy which has always had the intention of starting a coup like this once we are getting closer and closer to federal democracy.
We just have to see how things go in the morning. Back in 2008, what the military did was hold a referendum for their golden constitution and lied to the country that they got more than 90% of the vote when it was already so hard to note down the list of dead people and lost people. In 2023, we will see.
