[Congressional Record Volume 168, Number 19 (Monday, January 31, 2022)]
[Senate]
[Pages S402-S403]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                                 Burma

  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, when freedom and democracy are 
threatened, we have a responsibility in this body of the U.S. Senate to 
speak up and speak out. It doesn't matter if it is a challenge here at 
home or if it is happening somewhere else around the globe; we cannot 
remain silent.
  For the past year, Burma has been descending into chaos, violence, 
and authoritarian military rule. So I have come to the floor here 
tonight, the anniversary of the Burmese military's illegal coup 
overthrowing the nation's democratically elected government, to call on 
all of my colleagues to join me in passing S. Res. 35, a resolution 
condemning this desecration of democracy in Burma and a year of 
atrocities that have followed, and urging our allies around the world 
to join us in doing so.
  I also urge this body to pass the BURMA Act, which will give 
President Biden the tools he needs to apply pressure to try to reverse 
this coup and help restore democracy.
  For those who are not aware of the situation in Burma, a year ago, 
the

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people of Burma took to the streets. They engaged in general strikes to 
peacefully protest the military's overthrow of their fledgling 
democracy. One woman who was part of the General Strike Committee--one 
of the main groups behind the protests--said she was participating 
because ``I have a little girl. She's one . . . I don't want her to 
grow up under a dictatorship like I did.''
  Before taking to the streets, she told her husband: ``Take care of 
our baby and move on with life if I get arrested or die in this 
movement.''
  And she finished by saying: ``We will finish this revolution on our 
own and not hand it over to our children.''
  Early last year, the country's Parliament was expected to sign off on 
the recent national elections in which the leading civilian party, the 
National League for Democracy, and its head, Aung San Suu Kyi, had won 
more than 80 percent of the seats that were available.
  The Burmese military was never under civilian control, and it wasn't 
happy with these overwhelming results--these results for the National 
League for Democracy. They had been deluded into thinking and believing 
that the people of Burma supported their military policies, and so they 
would support a strong military role in Parliament, which the people of 
Burma did not.
  Thus, the military leaders refused to recognize the outcome of the 
election. They tried to have the country's supreme court throw out the 
results as fraudulent. And when that didn't work, they declared a 
national emergency and surrounded Parliament with soldiers.
  Aung San Suu Kyi and other civilian leaders were arrested, the 
nation's infrastructure was seized by the military, and, almost 
overnight, Burma's decade-long experiment with democracy, as imperfect 
as it was, was thrown out the window, and the kind of brutal military 
rule that had governed the country for roughly half a century was 
reinstated.
  The initial reaction from the new military junta seemed restrained. 
The protests were allowed to go on peacefully, but only for a little 
while. The restraint didn't last long.
  The military leaders who had been leading a brutal, yearlong genocide 
against the country's Rohingya Muslim minority turned to violence. They 
turned to violence, as they had done in 1988 and as they had done in 
2007, to crush the protests.
  One local filmmaker in Yangon, who took it upon himself to document 
the protests, said that at one protest in late February, ``about 100 
people marched towards us quickly. I don't know if they were police or 
they were soldiers. Without warning, they started shooting at us with 
sound bombs, [with] bullets and [with] gas bombs.''
  Since then, the military's violence has escalated. They have fired 
rocket launchers, burned down homes, launched airstrikes, cut off food 
supplies to starve entire communities, and shot at unarmed civilians as 
they fled.

  Just last week, there was a report that members of the military went 
to one village looking for two specific individuals, one of whom was 
disabled. After shooting and killing these two individuals, they set 
fire to the entire village.
  According to one organization monitoring the situation, nearly 1,500 
Burmese citizens have been killed since this coup began a year ago; 
another 12,000 arrested; with warrants issued--often death warrants 
issued in absentia--for another 2,000 or so. Those are just the numbers 
that can be verified, and who knows what the total amount is.
  For the Rohingya people, a Muslim population in a largely Buddhist 
country, the situation has only grown worse. They have been the target 
of military oppression and genocide. Hundreds of thousands have fled 
across the border. But the military has continued to crack down even 
more on the Rohingya population in Rakhine State--a state I visited a 
few years ago, leading a delegation of Senators and House Members, 
after the horrific genocide, when some 700,000 people fled, villages 
were fire-bombed from the air, and helicopters carrying soldiers shot 
from the air. On the ground, babies were killed in front of their 
parents, wives were killed in front of their husbands, husbands were 
killed in front of their wives, and women were raped. It was one of the 
most horrific genocides in hundreds of villages that occurred at that 
moment.
  But the military now, in spite of all that happened then, is enacting 
new draconian restrictions on freedom of movement of the Rohingya that 
remain in Rakhine State. They have engaged in continuous intimidation 
efforts. They have warned of the dangers of collaborating with rogue 
groups resisting the military's authority.
  Colleagues, the Senate cannot stay quiet in the denial of freedom and 
the presence of massive human rights violations in Burma. America 
cannot stay silent in the face of such atrocities. The world must not 
stay silent in the face of genocide being carried out against any group 
of human beings.
  We must make it undeniably clear to any government around the world 
that when you systematically persecute your people; when you deny their 
human rights; when you murder innocent men, women, and children; when 
you burn down their homes and their communities; when you starve them 
of food, deny them the opportunity to earn a living or even travel to 
the next community to see a doctor, there are consequences; that a 
community of nations will not stand by idly as you commit these 
horrendous acts; and that we in the Senate will not sit by and fail to 
give voice about these atrocities.
  So for the sake of all the Burmese people who have lost their lives 
in this coup, for the sake of all those striving to restore democracy, 
let us pass S. Res. 35, and let us do it this week--``A resolution 
condemning the military coup that took place on February 1, 2021, in 
Burma and the Burmese military's detention of civilian leaders, calling 
for an immediate and unconditional release of all those detained and 
for those elected to serve in parliament to resume their duties without 
impediment.''
  Let's pass that resolution, and let's do it this week, the 1-year 
anniversary of the coup. And let us work with our allies around the 
globe to restore freedom in Burma and hold the perpetrators of these 
atrocities accountable for the crimes that they have committed.