Good morning. On 1 February last year, Myanmar’s military, the Tatmadaw, staged a coup in the middle of the night, detaining Aung San Suu Kyi and many other leading figures from the country’s ruling party. Military television said the army had taken charge for one year in response to electoral fraud. Eighteen months later, the junta is still in power, almost 12,000 people are in detention and more than 2,000 have been killed.
This week, the military executed four prisoners, including a former politician and a veteran activist, in the first use of capital punishment in decades. For many in the west, the end of Myanmar’s spell of quasi-democracy was a brief moment of dismay. But these executions are only the latest signal of the regime’s ongoing status as among the most oppressive and ruthless in the world.
