Image Credits: @tsawwunna24 on Unsplash (Unsplash License)

---

On February 1, 2022, a coup d’état occurred in Burma, now Myanmar, leading to the capturing of Burmese President Win Myint and Prime Minister Aung San Suu Kyi by the country’s military junta, under the accusation of election fraud. Since then, these government officials have remained in detention, while additional officials were even murdered by the junta which took power. Detail has emerged on human rights abuses by the military, including the genocide of 750,000 Rohingya Muslims.  

On April 7, 2022, the BURMA Act of 2021 (H.R. 5497) was passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, after having been proposed by a group of representatives in October of the previous year. The act called for the Biden administration to impose sanctions on those who had disrupted democracy in the Southeastern Asian nation. However, it included not only sanctions in response to the coup d’état, but also humanitarian assistance.

While the BURMA Act received no further consideration in the U.S. Senate, a similar act (S2937) had been introduced in the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 2021, but did not advance to the Senate floor for a vote. 

Finally, on December 23, 2022, President Biden signed into Law the James M. Inhofe National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023 (NDAA 2023; P.L. 117–263), which included a modified version of the Burma Act from the U.S. House of Representatives. Changes had been made with the specific purpose of gaining approval in the U.S. Congress.

As compared with the BURMA Act of 2021, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2023 includes weaker support to Burma. The assistance to the civil society and vulnerable ethnic communities was quite reduced in impact, the aid was also decreased, and the economic sanctions were downgraded in priority, in order to particularly get Senate Republicans to agree with the bill. On the positive side, however, the modified bill included newer acts such as emphasizing on calling for the UN to input greater efforts, providing greater humanitarian assistance, as well as imposing an arms embargo on the military.

This was not the first time the U.S. had proposed and passed sanctions on Burma, which also had trouble maintaining democratic practices in previous decades. The first series of U.S. sanctions dated back to 1997. The Burmese Freedom and Democracy Act of 2003 (H.R. 2330) was another act aimed at sanctioning the ruling Burmese military junta and to recognize the National League of Democracy as the legitimate political force. 

Even before the coup d’état from 2022, a U.S. legislative proposal from 2019 called for the Burmese military to decrease its strength in Parliament. The bill, called the “Burma Unified through Rigorous Military Accountability Act of 2019” (H.R. 3190), included aspects such as a demand to resolve domestic conflicts, a discussion of human rights abuses, and sanctions. 

However, the 2019 bill was not passed, especially due to stark opposition from the Senate Minority Leader, Republican Senator Mitch McConnell. He had stated that, as an “old friend” of Aung San Suu Kyi, he worried that the U.S. legislative proposal which openly addressed the Rohingya crisis would weaken her ability to rule her nation. In 2022, McConnell’s repeated his opposition to legislation aimed at sanctioning the Southeastern nation, this time after the junta had taken control, caused anxiety within the Burmese community in the U.S., whose members were wondering if his support for Burma’s democracy had wavered. Regardless, the modified legislation proposal ultimately passed. 

The legislation to sanction the junta in Burma signed into law in 2022 has permitted the U.S. to provide assistance to anti-junta groups such as the National Unity Government, Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, and People’s Defense Force. 

When these groups first emerged, they were characterized as having no real possibility to defend people against the junta. However, these groups had grown in number, with the People’s Defense Force reaching 65,000 total troops by the end of 2022. Although the armed resistance began with makeshift weapons that led the junta to underestimate it, private donation money of over $55 million allowed the anti-junta forces to purchase defense weapons. 

In addition to money donated, anti-junta forces have received $450 million from the U.S. through the legislation passed in 2022. While the act does not provide anti-junta movements with weaponry, it offers support for the purposes of protecting political prisoners and civilians as well as supporting activists and media funding. 

The Biden administration has also implemented sanctions on military officials and state-owned businesses, has provided financial support to civil organizations, and has offered humanitarian aid to Rohingya refugees. Yet people of Burmese descent in the U.S. are calling for the Biden administration to play an even more active role in supporting the pro-democracy communities of the Southeastern Asian nation and to provide further aid. 

When taking a look at the impact of this act in the year 2023, it has caused even more frustrations for Burma. The U.S. refuses to provide military aid, but China and Russia are supporting the junta with weapons and money to buy weapons. The US had condemned them from doing so and threatened them with denunciation at the UN, but with events that had occurred across the world, such as the conflicts in Ukraine and Palestine, there is little discussion at the United Nations about the Burmese situation. 

Overall, the signing into law of legislation on Burma raised high hopes among Burmese citizens living in the United States, who believed that it would pressure the military into stopping the violence as well as increase the chance of armed groups to be successful in their fight against the junta. According to a Burmese scholar, the U.S. should have specified what “non-lethal assistance” was going to be, but rather the interpretation was left open. Consequently, the impact of the U.S. legislation is not as big as it had been hoped. To date, the junta is still in power and still oppresses the nation. It remains unclear whether the U.S. legislation has helped Burma to regain freedom from the junta and find its way back to democracy.