Myanmar: The minorities dilemma and its shaky path to democracy

Abstract

The minorities issue has always been Myanmar’s Achilles’ heel. Ethnic armed conflicts have plagued Myanmar since independence, and successive governments have been unable to resolve them completely. This chapter represents an attempt to sketch the trend of Myanmar’s democratic transformation since 2010 from an ethnic politics perspective, to pinpoint the major challenges the NLD government has faced in promoting reforms under a semi-democratic structure, to review the government’s changing relations with the military, and finally give a preliminary analysis of the deadly impact of the 2021 coup on Myanmar’s democracy and its minorities.