The outlook of totalitarianism today is vastly diverse compared to the early tomid-20th century. Be it the draconian rule of Joseph Stalin commandeering the Communist party or the notorious Nazi campaign under Adolf Hitler, the monochromatic image of an authoritarian mentality no longer exists in modern reality.
While the shades of a typical dictatorial regime could still be gathered from instances like the recent Coup d’état launched by the Junta: decimating democracy and trampling down the very tenets of humanity under a facade of national security, the diplomatic players like the National People’s Congress (NPC) equally exhibit the horrifying nature of a domineering mentality by demolishing the rudimentary facets underpinning basic rights of the citizens. Whether it’s a half-a-century rule muddled with blood and oppression or a 24-year democratic incarceration tightening the metaphorical noose with each successive day: the modus operandi of a militaristic mindset has evolved with time and the rendition of power today is hardly distinguishable from a political assertion.
Building up with the independence of Myanmar (formerly known as Burma), the event was etched as one of the most celebrated struggles of freedom from the British colonial rule post World War II. So was the supposed agreement of ‘One Country Two System’ plan forged between the British and the People’s Republic of China; an apparent liberation of Hong Kong. Both moments proved chaotic despite their golden nature, painting a bleak picture in history.
Whilst Myanmar fell under a spiral of outright militaristic brutality, changing hands for over almost 50 years forward, Hong Kong existed in a phony reality of a free government. The Junta clenched the power openly in Myanmar while China opted to tighten the screws in the background: silently pushing the communist narrative in the peripheries of Hong Kong. The Junta crushed any democratic movement that even insinuated a resistance to its blooming authority in the country. China, on the other hand, adopted a similar strategy but in the guise of reforms through legislation: disqualifying pro-democracy legislators from the parliament of Hong Kong and actively meddling in the house to underpin a pro-Beijing sentiment.
By some miracle, a voice, to the otherwise servile citizenry of Myanmar, was brought to the surface under the banner of the National League of Democracy (NLD). Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the resistance, actively impeded the military rule that coursed smoothly over the preceding decades. Rallies of defiance riddled the streets in 1989 as Suu Kyi emerged as a public figure rejuvenating the dreams of freedom in Myanmar. However, the dreams were short-lived. Despite of a win in the 1990 general elections, leaders of NLD (now parliamentarians) were brought down to their knees as Junta ruthlessly seized the mandate, simultaneously putting the leaders, including Suu Kyi, under house arrest.
Similar was the fate of pro-democracy activists who challenged the legitimacy of Chinese encroachment in the political affairs of Hong Kong. The communist agenda peddled by president Xi Jinping drubbed the fuming opposition in a relatively subtler manner. Instead of resorting to the same violent tactics adopted by China to pass the law of extradition of the Hongkongese convicts, the NPC routed through a schematic approach by passing the ‘National Security Law’ to safeguard the soundness of the legal system and maintaining the stability in the country. The pretense of this law was majorly used to corner the pro-democracy voices in Hong Kong which increasingly surfaced after the Umbrella protests in 2014. The law proved essential in curbing the accumulated power of such fragments in Hong Kong which propagated over the years even under a prevailing threat of arrest and execution. The law managed to thump down the voices that even managed to hold demonstrations against the local governments, tensile enough to resonate the streets with tens of thousands of protestors and even pushing the NPC to back down on some occasions. Since the clearance of the National Security Law into the legislation, as many as 47 pro-democracy activists have been indicted for subversion, facing sentences verging life imprisonment. Some of the activists have either gone underground or fled to the United Kingdom, paving a clear passage for the pro-Beijing factions to decimate the remaining institutions of the city without an active opposition that once managed to pressure NPC in rescinding the extradition law.
Back to the front of Myanmar, the people’s leader, Aung Suu Kyi, eventually evaded the shackles of the military and formed the government; thus, began a tryst of the nascent democracy with the Junta in 2011. The democracy fledged for the first time since 1962 under the banner of NLD. However, the mechanism of this freedom was as superfluous as the parliament of Hong Kong hailing freedom whilst being controlled by the Peoples Republic. Myanmar’s constitution stood as a symbol of liberation. However, the charter was all but a ruse drafted by the very dictators who were once chided by the NLD. The constitution granted a quarter of the seats in both houses of the parliament to the Junta while NLD celebrated at the behest of the same dictators pulling the ropes. The innocent citizens failed to realize the power games running the paradox, failed to decipher the collusion of dominance.
A similar gimmick was pulled by the NLC in Hong Kong. By default, only half of the parliament could be elected by the general public while the remaining representation was squelched by the NLC by flooding the Hong Kong parliament with political allies matching the pro-democracy sentiments elected by the general population. The Peoples Republic of China actively leveraged the loopholes and deficiencies in the city’s electoral system to undermine the natural tendencies of the people of Hong Kong, thus, subverting the voice of the Hongkongers that then manifested in the form of protests which were deftly portrayed as a threat to national security and put to rest through legislations. A crafted scheme to divert the blame over the victims and claim control through both nefarious yet diplomatic means.
In Myanmar, the Junta not only disparaged the rights of the civilians but actively massacred the minorities of the state. The genocide of Rohingya is one of the most sinister realities of military brutality as, over the years, thousands of innocent Muslims were butchered in the Rakhine state in the name of ‘Ethnic cleansing’. Many were forced to flee to neighboring countries where they live a dismal life, wailing for their rights. The leader who once chanted against the abject chaos wrecked by the Junta, Aung Suu Kyi instead casted the very Rohingya as terrorists whilst defending the Junta in the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The brutality, unfortunately, is matched within the boundaries of China. The state of Xinjiang has morphed into a nightmare for a Muslim community called ‘Uyghurs’. Accusing the community of rebellion and terrorism (quite like Rohingya), the pro-communist factions in China have detained between 1 million and 2 million Uighurs in over 1400 extrajudicial internment facilities since 2014. Torture has pervaded the state to levels beyond human limits. Sterilization, forced abortions, and ingestion of birth controls have diminished the birth rate of the community drastically. Suicide rates have turned rampant as China actively engages to eradicate the community to pave way for the dominant Han Chinese community to infiltrate the lucrative regions in Xinjiang. Under the pretense of ‘Educational camps’ China has blatantly campaigned to wipe off the Uighurs: on the same lines as fabricating the books, scriptures, and even practices of Hong Kong for years to weave the communist mentality in the generations whilst gradually eroding the original sentiments to the point that submission is the only option.
In recent reality, the Junta has overthrown the dummy government in Myanmar and regained control of the institutions. China, on the other hand, still actively denies its genocidal actions in Xinjiang and plans to pass legislation in Hong Kong to further exploit the electoral system to completely eliminate any last remaining remnants of democracy in the parliament. Whilst Junta has claimed a cumulative of 60 lives over persistent protests ranging since the launch of the coup in February, China has sped up its schemes to expedite the absorption of Hong Kong, paying no caution to the wind as the pro-Beijing factions simultaneously continue to squeeze the minorities like Uyghurs to keep the communist agenda afloat. In today’s day and age, it is difficult to bifurcate between legality and intervention, democracy and dictatorship no longer differ in appearance: totalitarians do not always don uniforms and arm artillery~The dictatorial mindset is enough to wreak havoc over the fundamentals of freedom and democracy.
