Myanmar’s generals have not thought their coup through

SIX WEEKS after the armed forces under General Min Aung Hlaing launched a coup d’état with calamitous implications for Myanmar, two factors become more salient by the day. The first is the scale of popular revulsion at the return to naked military rule.

Hundreds of thousands of Burmese have marched in protest at the coup. Huge numbers of civil servants, teachers, bus drivers and bank clerks and more are boycotting work. Savvy social-media types are highlighting the army’s abuses. Popular resistance to military rule appears stronger even than in 1988, when students led huge protests against it. As Thant Myint-U, author of “The Hidden History of Burma”, puts it, the spontaneous demonstrations are like antibodies responding to an endemic infection. The difference this time is the vehemence with which young Burmese refuse to revert to the tyranny and poverty their parents knew. They have come of age during the past decade of economic reform and semi-democratic government. The generals, as a refrain has it, are messing with the wrong generation.