A Brief History
On October 23, 2022, the Air Force of Myanmar conducted a bombing raid with a few fighter-bombers against a music concert! At least 80 civilians were killed in an incident called the “Hpakant massacre.”
Digging Deeper
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, has been undergoing a civil war since a military coup took over the government in 2021. The “junta” government claimed the air raid was against a military post of the rebel Kachin Independence Organisation and that no civilians were targeted or killed. The large crowd present at the bombing disagrees with that claim.
Performers and concert goers were killed, and deaths among KIO personnel that were at the concert also took place, while unknown numbers of people were injured.
International response was immediate, but impotent as usual. The UN condemned the bombing, Japan called for a halt of violence and holding of elections, while Australia called for sanctions against the junta government. Meanwhile, the unrest continues.
Question for students (and subscribers): What can the world do to protect the people of Myanmar? Please let us know in the comments section below this article.
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Historical Evidence
For more information, please see…
Acharya, Amitav. TRAGIC NATION BURMA: Why and how democracy failed. Penguin Random House SEA, 2022.
Slow, Oliver. Return of the Junta: Why Myanmar’s Military Must Go Back to the Barracks. Bloomsbury Academic, 2023.
The featured image in this article, a political map of Southeast Asia provided by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in their World Factbook, is in the public domain because it contains materials that originally came from the United States Central Intelligence Agency‘s World Factbook.
You can also watch video versions of this article on YouTube.
