Softliners

may emerge as military personnel and police officers realize that the regime lacks any claim to legitimacy and their institutions and the country could fare better by entering into negotiations with the protesters.

from sniper rifles. By mid-march, more than 200 protesters had been murdered by security forces, while more than a thousand people had been arrested — most of whom remain in detention. Yet the determination of protesters and the civil disobedience movement has only intensified in the wake of increasingly shocking tactics, including randomly strafing houses with live bullets in the middle of the night.

Protesters know they are facing off with one of the world’s most vicious militaries, accused of genocide against the rohingya minority and accustomed to turning its weapons on civilians. indeed, there are no indications that the leaders of the junta’s State administration Council are seeking reconciliation with protesters or elected parliamentarians. instead, the brutality, suppression and execution-style public murders of unarmed protesters, are only deepening the resolve of demonstrators who view the reign by terror as the beginning of a new and indefinite dictatorship that must be brought down.4