Myanmar junta chief calls for unity, says military holding power 'temporarily'

NAPYITAW — Myanmar's ruling general said on March 27 that the junta was holding power only temporarily with the aim of strengthening democracy. He called for unity among the people and military to fight armed groups seeking to derail plans to hold an election.

Addressing an annual Armed Forces Day parade, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, who led a coup in 2021, said his opponents were receiving foreign backing and trying to destroy the country and thwart plans to return Myanmar to democratic rule.

"The military, police force and people's militia are working to restore peace and stability," he told hundreds of soldiers in the capital Naypyitaw. "We need to have unity between the military and the people."

The military is facing its biggest challenge since first taking power in the former British colony in 1962, fighting on multiple fronts to contain uprisings in several parts of the country and stabilise an economy that has wilted since the coup.

Myanmar is locked in a civil war between the military on one side and, on the other, a loose alliance of ethnic minority rebels and an armed resistance movement spawned out of the junta's bloody crackdown on anti-coup protests.

The military has been accused by activists and some Western countries of committing systematic atrocities in its efforts to suppress the rebellion, with widespread use of air strikes and heavy artillery in civilian areas and allegations of arbitrary arrests, torture and executions.

The junta has dismissed those accusations as falsehoods.

"Foreign interference"

Min Aung Hlaing said on Wednesday (March 27) opponents were committing violence, looting and spreading hate, and that the military was being targeted by fake news from international journalists and