TODAY, the coup in Myanmar turns 586 days old. Many would have thought that global apathy would not last this long.
Well, it has. What is worse, it shows all the signs of growing older. Yes, the world sleeps as Myanmar kills. Talking of killing, as of Friday, the Tatmadaw, as the military there is called, has killed 2,269 people, according to daily digital briefings by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP), a human rights organisation based in Thailand and Myanmar.
AAPP's daily post also places the number of people behind bars — arrested or detained — at 27,762. For some unexplained reasons, AAPP doesn't provide the death toll for the Rohingya or other ethnic groups.
If there were such a tally, the numbers would run into tens of thousands, if not more. Because ethnic cleansing, at least that of the Rohingya, is an old story.
Why the global apathy? National interest is the reason why. Buried deep inside the term's ambiguity lie a nation's foreign policy and international politics.
It could be made to mean what a nation wants it to mean, especially if the nation is a major power.
Consider the United States. Why was it in the national interest of the US to save Kuwait from Iraq? Oil, to put it crudely. Imagine there was no oil? Would the US have sent its troops to the Persian Gulf, a distance of 10,000km? No. Oil was so important that the US, with the generous help of Britain, decided to invent a reason — the presence of weapons of mass destruction — to invade Iraq.
The United Nations, the global governance body, which is in essence the West by another name, just looked the other way.
Granted Myanmar has oil, but not in the quantity and quality that the Middle East has. To the US and its allies, Yangon is of no national interest to them. It is worth a skip, at least for now.
The race for control of the South China Sea and the Pacific region may change this, but this is something in the future.
For the moment, expect more deaths and detentions in Myanmar. Because the West is on an apathy break. So is the UN.
Sadly, it is not only the West that is apathy-struck, but also its neighbours. Begin with Beijing. China has the heft to send Myanmar's junta back to the barracks but it doesn't appear to want to.
To some geostrategists, Beijing-Yangon ties are complex. But still, why the oscillation, especially after the recent executions of four pro-democracy activists? The killing of 2,269 is reason enough for China to say enough is enough.
With the exception of a few, Asean member nations are no better. One or two are either shielding the junta or tacitly supporting it.
Truth be told, Asean is seen as having failed the people of Myanmar. The regional bloc started badly when it invited the coup leader Min Aung Hlaing to sit with its leaders to negotiate Asean's Five-Point Consensus. Consensus? Perhaps in name only.
More recently in July, as The Diplomat reports, the bloc repeated the mistake by inviting Myanmar's military officials to its defence ministers' meeting in Moscow. Getting it wrong once is a mistake, but getting it wrong again is apathy.