In a grand display of forces, Myanmar’s military Junta showcased a grand display of forces soon after the United States imposed sanctions on the ruling military for the current situation of the country, CNN reported.
The latest sanctions imposed by the United States on the country’s military regime and crony businesses target jet fuel for Myanmar’s armed forces. According to CNN, the US Treasury Department announced on Friday that it had sanctioned two people and six entities linked to Myanmar’s military for enabling the regime’s ongoing atrocities.
The display of forces on Monday marked the third time the military, also known as the Tatmadaw, has celebrated Armed Forces Day since overthrowing Aung San Suu Kyi’s democratically elected government.
She has since been sentenced to 33 years in prison in secretive trials that her lawyers claim are politically motivated.
Citing a video from state media, CNN reported that Myanmar’s Junta displayed not only forces but several types of equipment including tanks as well as rocket launchers.The country has notably been torn apart by violence and economic paralysis in the two years since the coup.
The junta has cracked down on anti-coup protesters, arrested journalists and political prisoners, and executed several prominent pro-democracy activists, prompting condemnation from the United Nations and human rights organisations.
Myanmar has been mired in political violence since military leader Min Aung Hlaing seized power in a 2021 coup that upturned any hope the Southeast Asian nation of 55 million people would become a functioning democracy.
The coup was followed by a brutal military crackdown against pro-democracy protesters that saw civilians shot in the street, abducted in nighttime raids and allegedly tortured in detention.
The coup has also resulted in a surge in fighting between the military and a raft of resistance groups allied with long-established ethnic militias in a country that has been plagued for decades by insurgencies.
Resistance groups have repeatedly accused Myanmar’s military of carrying out mass killings, air strikes and war crimes against civilians in the regions where fighting has raged, charges the junta repeatedly denies—despite a growing body of evidence.