As Myanmar’s currency depreciates and inflation soars, the owner of three mobile phone stores in Mandalay announced a pay rise for his employees. Word of his generosity quickly went viral on Facebook, with employees cheering the news.
But Myanmar’s military sees it differently. Soldiers and police arrested shopkeeper U Pyae Phyo Zaw, closed his three shops and charged him with inciting public unrest under a vaguely worded law often used to suppress dissent, according to his brother and a shop clerk.
Mr. Paipazou is one of at least 10 business owners arrested in recent weeks after rumors circulated online that they were raising workers’ wages. A legal expert said raising wages was not prohibited, but the business owners were accused of undermining the regime by convincing people that inflation was rising. They all face three years in prison.
Soldiers put up a notice outside a shop in Pyae Phyo Zaw saying it was closed for disturbing “peace and order in the community.”
The junta spokesman, General Zaw Min Tun, declined to answer repeated calls from The New York Times.
“We are very grateful for the wage increase, but now the store is closed and I can’t get paid,” said the employee, who asked not to be named. “Ordinary people like us are suffering from high prices and are almost desperate.”
The military returned to power in a coup in 2021, and a subsequent popular revolt against its rule has plunged the country into an economic crisis, reversing progress made during a decade of quasi-democratic leadership.
The junta faces intense pressure from armed ethnic rebels and pro-democracy fighters, who control more than half the country and are making steady gains on the battlefield, capturing numerous military bases and outposts.
While fighting the rebels, Myanmar government forces burned villages and rice fields in Shwebu, Myanmar’s northern breadbasket, destroying crops and sharply increasing food prices. The rebels seized Myanmar’s main border crossings with China, India and Thailand, disrupting trade with them.
Power is often down to less than four hours a day across Myanmar, except in the general’s capital, Naypyidaw, shutting down manufacturing and spreading misery in places where temperatures regularly reach 100 degrees F. At least 250 people died of heat stroke in Mandalay and Magway regions in May, according to a nonprofit ambulance service that transports the dead.
“The Myanmar economy after 2021 has come out of crisis, through chaos, and now it is certainly on the brink of collapse as a formally functioning development entity,” said Sean Turnell, an Australian economist who served as an adviser to ousted civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and now advises the opposition-led Government of National Unity.
World Bank Report In June, Myanmar’s economic output shrank by 9% since 2019, and the poverty rate soared to its highest level in nearly a decade. Currently, one-third of Myanmar’s population lives below the poverty line.
As more than 3 million people fled the fighting to remote villages and jungle camps in Myanmar, many young men and women fled overseas to avoid conscription, shrinking the country’s labor force. Thousands more left cities to join the resistance.
Western financial sanctions have crippled Myanmar’s economy, leaving the country increasingly isolated and short of foreign exchange. The country’s national currency, the kyat, has fallen to a third of its pre-coup value on the black market.
Mr Turnell, who was jailed for 22 months by the Burmese government on trumped-up charges, said the collapse of the kyat amounted to a “massive” destruction of wealth.
In a statement released by the Government of National Accord, he said the generals’ economic policies were a “desperate scramble to finance their war”. He noted that since the coup the regime had slashed funding for health and education while increasing military spending by 60%.
A report released on Wednesday by Tom Andrews, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said many of the Myanmar government’s weapons come from overseas and Thailand has become a major shipping channel.
Andrews said the military junta imported nearly $130 million in weapons and equipment From suppliers registered in Thailand Last year, arms exports more than doubled from the year before. He urged Thailand to stop the flow of weapons.
The report also accused 16 banks in seven countries of helping Myanmar’s ruling military junta evade Western sanctions. Mr Andrews urged the banks to stop facilitating “war crimes and crimes against humanity”.
To finance the war, the junta has printed nearly 30 trillion kyat since the coup, about $9.2 billion at the current official exchange rate, causing a sharp devaluation of the currency and driving up inflation.
To curb inflation, the junta has frozen prices of staples such as rice, meat and cooking oil; restricted purchases of gold and foreign currency; and tried to curb overseas capital flows.
In recent weeks, authorities have arrested dozens of people for violating price and currency controls, including rice producers, gold traders and money changers. They have also arrested brokers who sell condos in Thailand — a major investment conduit — and buyers who set up Thai bank accounts to facilitate purchases.
On Sunday, junta media announced that 11 more people had been arrested, including the heads of four major supermarket chains and seven large rice producers, for charging rice prices more than double the junta’s set prices. One of those arrested was reportedly an executive at a Japanese supermarket chain.
At a market in Mandalay, a video showed a local official using a megaphone to announce fixed prices for pork, beef and mutton. She urged customers to report anyone charging higher prices.
“Arresting shopkeepers for rising prices is against the law,” said human rights lawyer U Kyee Myint. “In Myanmar, the law is only in name only, so from a legal perspective, everything the military junta is doing is ridiculous.”
Rice is an essential part of the diet for most people, and rising rice prices hit the poor particularly hard.
Daw Nge Nge Tun, a woman shopping in Mandalay, said rice prices at her market had tripled and she could no longer afford decent rice. Now she could only buy cheap broken rice, which is usually used to feed chickens.
“Before I could buy good quality rice and eat it,” she said, “Now I think the lives of Burmese people are like chickens sitting on a farm waiting to be slaughtered.”
