Chan Min | Sergeant, Military Science and Technology Research Command | ယခုဆောင်းပါးကို မြန်မာဘာသာဖြင့် ဖတ်ရှုရန် ဤနေရာတွင် နှိပ်ပါ
Cite as: Chan Min. (2025). Brainwashed Soldiers in a Terrorist Military. Independent Journal of Burmese Scholarship, 5. https://ijbs.online/?page_id=5254
Abstract
One reason the sit tat is able to terrorize the people of Myanmar is that military leaders systematically instill fear into the minds of soldiers. These low-ranking soldiers then commit inhumane acts on the public out of their own terror. Soldiers are bullied, brainwashed and pushed to the brink of exhaustion through their so-called duties, which only contribute to the misery of the country. This has been going on ever since the first military coup of 1962 under the tyrant Ne Win. The people of Myanmar must strive to overturn military rule and its patrons as swiftly as possible to prevent the country becoming a failed state.
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The world watched the Myanmar military violently attack peaceful protesters during the beginning of the Spring Revolution. On the surface, one can assume that such atrocities were committed because of the military’s overall policy of keeping unity and soldiers unquestioningly following orders. But real people committed these atrocities. Low-ranking soldiers on the ground, violently inclined and willing to do such things, committed the most inhumane actions. These included shooting a child in the head, a child crying in their father’s arms, simply for being too noisy. Attacking, with intent to kill, teachers—revered on the same level as the Buddha—even before the protests started in earnest. Violently beating and arresting students the same age as their very own brothers and sisters. Arresting people under the guise of being ‘questioned’ and then asking the families to collect the bodies of their loved ones the next day. The military leadership intentionally shapes low-ranking soldiers to carry out everyday violence and kill unarmed civilians. Military leaders foster and sponsor the brutal attitudes of grunt soldiers.
The abovementioned crimes are just a small fraction of those that the Myanmar military is responsible for since the 1 February 2021 coup. The military has committed, and is still committing, even worse atrocities to this day. In the following sections, I will discuss why frontline soldiers are cold-bloodedly committing such lawless and violent actions against the civilian public.
Instilling Fear into the Minds of Soldiers
In the military’s training academies (apart from some basic training courses) there is a hierarchical system in which senior trainees discipline and control junior trainees. Junior trainees have to follow the directives of their senior officers, but they must also comply with the orders of senior trainees. They gradually become loyal only to the military institution rather than understanding the wider national interest.
Soldiers in charge at all levels turn a blind eye to bullying and intimidation, rife when teaching recruits how to become a ‘tough’ soldier, to adhere to the military hierarchy, to follow orders and to withstand hardship. Although most young trainee soldiers know that such abuse is not fair, if they choose to escape the military they are known as deserters, living a disgraced existence, and their families will be looked down upon. As a result, recruits quickly stop their independent thinking and attempt to fit into the tyrant-created army system as best they can. They acclimatize.
This is helped by the fact that recruits are cut off from the outside world when they begin military training. Many restrictions on the use of smartphones and the internet are enforced, allowing soldiers to be systematically brainwashed through the forced consumption of military propaganda television programs and news. These different levels of propaganda teach soldiers that even the food they are eating is provided by the military, and this idea is purposefully embedded to instill loyalty.
Soldiers continue to face similar hierarchical oppression, based on rank, after their training ends and they are stationed out at their bases or duty posts. Most officers take advantage of low-ranking soldiers, demanding they run errands and take care of personal matters completely unrelated to their official duties. Officers scold and swear at their subordinates, even when their subordinates are older in age than them. Some even go as far as beating them. This also happens to soldiers’ wives and children. I have seen a commander’s wife belittle an officer’s wife, and in turn, the officer’s wife then does the same to other lower-ranked soldiers’ wives. They do such things under the misguided notion that they must inculcate obedience in others.
The consequence of this punitive hierarchical system is the gradual demoralization and shame of new recruits as they turn into low-ranking soldiers, sergeants and privates. They are made to believe they must obey any order and provide anything that an officer demands of them, and that it is normal to be physically abused when they fail to do so. Most recruits do not have high levels of education when they are trained to be soldiers, and as mentioned, the generals quickly cut them off from the outside world. Consequently, they are not able to perceive the mistreatment they and other soldiers suffer; the mental and physical abuse that violates their human rights. Their minds are molded from the day they join: if you are a soldier, you must follow all the orders that come from above or suffer the consequences. In short, as a soldier, you are terrorized and influenced by fear.
Burma’s History of Systematic Military Propaganda
After independence from the United Kingdom in 1948, there were many ethnic separatist movements throughout the country, resulting in splinter groups forming within the national army, weakening its structure and almost collapsing the entire institution. Because of this internal division surrounding ethnicity, the military lost up to half of its soldiers and weaponry. This shocked the army leadership and remains one of the largest setbacks the Myanmar military has endured throughout its history. Learning from these events, successive military leaders prioritized systematically cajoling and controlling soldiers in different ways to ensure such splits would never again repeat. The military continuously carries out propaganda and indoctrination to discourage disloyalty and to create soldiers that will never abandon the institution under any circumstances. Soldiers are manipulated into being content with military life and staying united.
After the coup in 1962, the tyrant General Ne Win severed the military from the people and created a separate space for it within the country. The army established its own social welfare program with health, education and other infrastructure. Additionally, the military even established its own businesses within units, reducing soldiers’ engagement with the outside world. The military has, since 1962, been a kind of self-sufficient, independent organization. The ideas and perspectives of officers and soldiers have not changed much due to the decades-long inculcation of certain ideas, military orders, and unitary dogma, despite ideas and attitudes in the outside world evolving and changing, especially after sanctions were reduced during the recent time of civilian government. After 2010, there were positive developments throughout the country, but the military remained strictly controlled, steadfastly operating through hierarchical discrimination and fear.
Military authorities constantly cued soldiers that they were the guardians of the union, responsible for ensuring unity among ethnic groups, for the sovereignty of the state and for protecting the Buddhist religion from decline. They did so through directives that made soldiers feel like a ruling class. They pushed the conceit that soldiers are above civilians and that the country would collapse without them. They also hammered home the idea that because Myanmar was situated between two powerful countries, China and India, the military needed to become continuously stronger. Due to Ne Win’s 1962 coup and its consequences, those living in military barracks lacked relationships with the outside world, and therefore families of military personnel did not have any opportunities to mitigate the military’s indoctrination of them.
This is not to say that the outside world was unaffected. The military expanded the reach of its propaganda machine from within the military institution to civilian public schools. It filled school curricula with tales of conqueror kings with exaggerated military skills winning wars and building kingdoms, extending militarism into innocent children’s minds, and pushing the propaganda that military power is the most important factor in nation-building. The military regime also restricted the flow of news within the country by only allowing two news media outlets to operate (Myawaddy and Myanmar Radio & Television), both of which were aligned with the military, increasing the involvement of the military in Myanmar politics.
Through these media outlets, the military periodically air expensive propaganda movies to spread the idea that the military was integral to the country. Such movies prioritize propaganda like, “The country can be strong only when the military is strong!” and “The military is the mother, the military is the father!”. Within the isolated military world, these movies had a substantial impact. As a soldier, when you watch propaganda movies about how noble soldiers are, you are unable to see it for what it really is; you feel only pride. The military’s propaganda films did not have an equivalent impact outside the barracks, where people’s thinking and everything else was more evolved.
Military leaders also strengthened their grip on the institution by controlling economic benefits. They constructed a system for favoring chosen soldiers with rents and resources developed from monopolizing valuable economic sectors since the 1950s. The leaders of the military and their families used the wealth and assets they accumulated over years of military rule to co-opt any potential rivals and entrench them in the system they built. Consequently, rivals for military leadership were often silenced. This distribution of profits and benefits never reached the bottom tiers of the military, where soldiers struggled in poor conditions.
Moreover, to hold onto their power and benefits, military autocrats did not hesitate to immediately and mercilessly terminate anyone who posed a problem to them, even if they were from within their own organization. The most prominent example is the hanging of Captain Ohn Kyaw Myint, who attempted to depose the tyrant Ne Win because he could no longer tolerate the unjust policies and governance of the Burma Socialist Programme Party. (There were only two people who were hanged during Ne Win’s rule; the other was student leader Salai Tin Maung Oo.)
Another example is General Khin Nyunt, a key member of the military, who led and grew the Military Intelligence (MI) into a powerful organization rivalling the military after the 1988 uprising. Military authorities saw the MI’s growth as a threat to the internal unity of the military and purged it in 2004. Just like that, these tyrants brutally exterminate anyone they think could be a thorn in their side, setting an example to others and instilling fear into soldiers.
When the toll of following orders for years combines with shame, dissatisfaction, low self-esteem and fear, soldiers do not hesitate to lash out and kill innocent people, who may be simply protesting peacefully, at any opportunity. Because of the fear that has pervaded their entire military lives, they can no longer distinguish right from wrong, and they strictly follow all orders given to them. The mistreatment and suffering they have endured within the military fuel their encounters with everyday people. Their armed subjugation of the public is much more than just ‘following orders.’
Turning Frontline Soldiers Against the People
The military used to staff its battalions with 500-600 members, but due to high attrition and low enlistment rates, each combat battalion now only consists of about 200 soldiers. Due to these inadequate numbers, each enlisted soldier was ordered to do two or three additional duties before the coup. When citizens peacefully objected to the 2021 coup and protests erupted nationwide, alongside a slowly developing armed resistance, the military struggled to deploy its forces. The two to three duties assigned to each soldier increased to four or five duties.
In addition to their frontline military operational duties, soldiers now had to undertake vehicle convoy security, road security, urban area security and protest monitoring duties. In carrying out their duties, particularly protest monitoring and urban area security, soldiers would inevitably face and deal with the public head on. After the coup military authorities prevented soldiers from taking breaks. They did not swap fatigued soldiers over with fresh, rested soldiers. Rice and curry sent to the troops was late and often expired, and soldiers were being randomly checked and monitored. They would also be scolded and beaten when their supervisors came to check on them. Soldiers became angry, on duty without any breaks in the blazing sun, wearing heavy uniforms, bulletproof vests and helmets.
Officers kept soldiers opposed to the public by telling them that the people were revolting against them—they would have to continuously work in the scorching heat and keep the people under control if they ever wanted to take a rest from duty. Most low-ranking soldiers have reduced critical thinking skills and accept whatever their officers tell them. When these soldiers unleash their anger upon the public, it leads to killings and inhumane, brutal torture. Willingness to follow orders, while under the influence of fear, in the difficult operational field contexts mentioned above, all contribute to military personnel committing inhumane acts.
Review
A toddler can begin to distinguish between right and wrong from the age of two years old. Although a two-year-old child can make this distinction, soldiers in the Myanmar military cannot. This is evident in atrocities where citizens are treated as enemies, and in the arson and killings still going on, caused by the factors already mentioned: years of internal oppression in the military along with isolation from the rest of the country, willingness to follow orders, the fear felt by soldiers, and so on. Only a few soldiers have been able to escape military brainwashing and join the side of the people.
It is true that a nation needs a military to defend it. But our country does not need a military that tortures its own people. People are living under constant fear because of this brainwashed military. A pervasive sadness hangs over the Myanmar people that live under a military regime committing everyday violence such as arson, killing, and subjugating the very people and country the military swore to protect.
The Myanmar military is no longer loved and praised by the people; it will go down in history as a pariah. Our country, which only recently had so much potential for development under a democratic government, is now suffering greatly because of this terrorist military coup. Currently, the military is trying to terrorize the public just like it does its own military personnel. Due to the military’s attempt to govern the country under a unitary military system, Myanmar is now the poorest among the Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries; experts have also warned that Myanmar could become a failed state at any time. If Myanmar continues to be ruled by this military with its brainwashed soldiers, who bring nothing of value to the country and its people, our country will inevitably suffer from economic sanctions in various sectors, restrictions in freedom of the press and the loss of human rights, thereby descending into further poverty.
Therefore, we must strive to overturn military rule and its patrons with everything in our power and as swiftly as possible.