Today is the National Day in Myanmar

but the people of Myanmar have nothing to celebrate. The military is continuing to "rule" using violence.

I know many people think badly of Aung San Suu Kyi but in reality did she have any choice when she allowed the military the amount of power they had from the start? I doubt it. I suspect she hoped to change the way the country was run from within that - and she failed. The military proved too powerful.

The number of people trying to leave Myanmar for a safer life elsewhere continues.  There are ethnic divisions. It is a country with great resources - and immense poverty. Most of the world's refugees come from Myanmar, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Iraq and Venezuela. They all have resources that could be used for the benefit of those who live there. I have no idea how what should be done could be done. Certainly the military in Myanmar is not going to give up power easily. China will also do everything it can to ensure the military retains power there. It helps the Chinese themselves control a restless border.

I had a very close friend, now sadly deceased, who worked as a "dispatch" rider in what was then Burma during WWII. It was an incredibly dangerous job but he somehow survived. He found the local Burmese people friendly and supportive. He found those parts of the countryside not ravaged by war beautiful. And he found poverty, extreme poverty. Despite their poverty he found the local people willing to share what they had. It might have helped that he had done everything he could to learn a little of the language. Despite all the dangers, he left the country reluctantly. 

He later went and worked in the Sudan. It was another country which captured him. Again he found poverty but a willingness to share.When his contract ended there he did not want to leave any more than he had wanted to leave Myanmar. 

The situation in both countries is now far worse than it was when my friend was alive. Even then he felt that, despite all the claims to the contrary, there was something to be said for "colonial rule". He saw Zimbabwe disintegrating in what he called "post-colonial chaos". He didn't see it as a failure to train people to take over, rather as a desire for power among a few. He had no idea what the answer was or is.

I don't know either. I wonder what the people of Myanmar are thinking today. They should be able to feel pride in their country on their national day but too many of them will only feel despair.