About twenty social, political and trade union organizations have united in a manifesto to demand European companies and governments to suspend the supply of arms and any commercial ties with the Burmese dictatorship in solidarity with the population of the Asian country controlled since last February by a coup military junta.

“The EU and its Member States cannot remain impassive. The coup must be condemned and solidarity must be shown with the Burmese workers, youth and labor movements. The international forces must demand the cessation of repression and the release of those arrested,” says the manifesto signed by Ecologistas en Acción, ATTAC, ELA, MATS, IAC, CS, CCOO, LAB, Anticapitalistas, Adelante Andalucía, CUP, Bildu, ERC, BNG, Podemos, IU and Más País.

The brief also calls for the strong condemnation of the military coup by the European states, the immediate release of all those detained and solidarity with the Civil Disobedience Movement (MDC) which includes health care workers and “generation Z” (high school youth) who were the first to reject the coup, as well as trade unionists, including those of the CTUM trade union federation, which called the February 8 general strike.

Months of struggle and military repression

Since the coup d’état of February 1, the Burmese people have been suffering violent repression at the hands of the Tatmadaw, the Burmese army. The elections to the Union Assembly in November 2020 gave a majority to the National League for Democracy, so the Army has feared losing its privileges.

The Tatmadaw then arrested the president and hundreds of democratically elected representatives. The popular classes have resisted and organized in the Civil Disobedience Movement, taking to the streets, holding massive strikes and demanding the establishment of a new federalist constitution to put an end to army interference. In addition, an incipient movement of unprecedented inter-ethnic solidarity is being generated in a region wounded by these divisions, fueled in turn by the Tatmadaw.

22 April 2021

Público