Why in news?
- Protests against the military coup in Myanmar have assumed new dimensions.
- Some “ethnic armed organisations” (EAOs) are mounting their own resistance against the junta (a military or political group that rules a country after taking power by force.)
What are the recent tensions?
- The generals are hitting back the EAOs with airstrikes, a sign that they are ready to use the most brutal means to crush opposition.
- The Myanmar military bombed villages on its border with Thailand.
- It carried this out in retaliation for the loss of one of its outposts in the southeastern Karen (now renamed Kayin) state that the Karen National Union (KNU) had seized earlier.
- The air strikes sent hundreds of Karen, one of Myanmar’s many ethnic minority groups, scattering across the border.
- Some 24,000 Karen people have been displaced in fighting in the past one month.
- Another area of tension is in the north, in Kachin state bordering China and forming a trijunction with India.
- Aerial bombardment has been going on here for days since the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) attacked two police outposts and a military base.
- Some 5,000 people are displaced with this.
- In Myanmar’s western Chin state, which borders Mizoram, 15 soldiers were killed in two separate incidents.
- This was claimed by a new ethnic armed militia called the Chinland Defence Force (CDF).
- Impact - The resistance by the EAOs seems to have taken the Myanmar army by surprise.
- In all, 21 EAOs, and several more militias, are active in the border states of Myanmar.
- Many of them have been waging armed resistance against the state for decades now.
What is the unfulfilled Federation dream of Myanmar?