What do you want to happen and not want to happen in the new year?

Myanmar Spring Chronicle – December 31 Scenes
MoeMaKa, January 01, 2023

What do you want to happen and not want to happen in the new year?

The calendar year 2022 has come to an end. Looking back on the past year at the end of 2022, which is not the traditional Myanmar calendar, but the world calendar year and office year, we do pray for the transition to the coming new year and make New Year’s resolutions.

When I reflect on the past, I see wars, arrests, unlawful killings, bomb explosions, aerial shootings, aerial bombardments, fleeing war, alleged killings, deliberate burning of houses and looting of property, crimes, robberies, hundreds to thousands of people leaving the country for livelihood and security, and propaganda plots on both sides. These are the images of the year 2022.

These events did not occur solely in the year 2022. The causes and events of 2021 were conveyed to 2022, and while some of the causes have weakened and some events have ceased, others have grown stronger and more intense.

Among the events in 2022, a year about to end, I don’t want unlawful killings, alleged killings, assassinations, house burnings, and shooting, attacking, killing, bombing, arresting, and torturing people without distinguishing between civilians and members of the armed forces to continue. I oppose indiscriminate torture and killing of men and women; indiscriminate shooting, arresting, and killing of children and adults; and deaths as a result of illegal arrest and torture, but no organization can continue to punish perpetrators, from the previous year into the new year.

We do not want to carry over into the new year the bad events of the previous year, such as evil acts, revenge killings, committing crimes, economic corruption, inequality of rights, hunger and thirst, and the loss of lives due to inability to receive medical treatment. The transition of a calendar year changes to the next year in the last minute and hour of a day, but the process is considered to be consecutive. However, the intention will be to be aware of what to do and what to avoid in the coming days, months, and years, and to remove the causes and effects of the old year.

There is a need in Myanmar to try to bring justice and an end to wars in the new year, to find a solution to the armed conflict on the basis of justice, to find a solution with the aim of preventing the recurrence of conflict in the future without looking for immediate benefit, to recognize the equality of people, and to recognize and accept people as equal in terms of social rights and economic rights as well.

It would be an unrealistic fantasy to expect that the fighting, arrests, killings, and house burnings would suddenly cease in the new year. However, after carefully reviewing the past year 2022 and deciding what we do not want to happen in the coming year, the relevant organizations and those who have the responsibility to make decisions, will have to try to prevent what we do not want to happen.