Myanmar’s shadow government deserves more help

ago this month, Myanmar’s army launched a pogrom against Rohingyas, a Muslim minority, that ended up pushing 750,000 of them out of the country. The unlucky refugees are still rotting in camps in Bangladesh. The Rohingyas that remain in , meanwhile, suffer systematic segregation and discrimination (). Not content with persecuting a minority of its citizens, however, the army has since overthrown the civilian government and brutally suppressed nationwide protests against the usurpation of democracy. That has spawned violent resistance, which the army is attempting, without success, to crush.Few regimes around the world are more blood-stained and repugnant. Yet few regimes are also harder to influence. Western countries have suspended aid and Western businesses have divested, for the most part. The economy shrank by 18% last year, by the World Bank’s estimate. But the army does not care about the immiseration of its citizens. In fact, it does not care about them full-stop: its scorched-earth campaign against the rebels fighting for democracy has killed thousands of innocent bystanders and displaced about 1m people.