Raffles, Bonds and Crypto fund Myanmar’s armed resistance

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BANGKOK

More than two years after Myanmar’s military toppled the country’s elected government and sparked a bloody civil war, resistance groups pushing back against junta rule are finding ever smarter, high-tech ways to fund their fight.

Direct donations from the country’s diaspora, from Sweden to Singapore, continue to pour in in what remains a largely crowd-funded campaign, but bonds, property auctions and mining leases are now adding to the mix.

The National Unity Government, an opposition shadow administration run from underground and exile, last year launched a digital currency in an endgame around banks under the sway of the junta and is now about to open his own online bank.

While the NUG would clearly like more state sponsorship and support, be it lethal or non-lethal assistance, from Western countries, it’s just not in the cards right now, and so they really had to be self-reliant, said Zachary Abuza, a professor. at Washingtons National War College which has studied Southeast Asian insurgencies for 30 years.

And they did it through some of the most tech-savvy and creative, and dare I say, playful ways, he told VOA. They really flipped the script.

FILE – Refugees from Myanmar, who fled an outbreak of violence as the army cracks down on rebel groups, walk with food aid at the Thai border in Thailand’s Mae Sot district, January 15, 2022.

Not so real estate

The fighting is estimated to have killed more than 30,000 people, displaced more than 1.5 million people internally and sent thousands more fleeing to neighboring countries since the February 2021 coup.

Hundreds of local militias have taken up arms across the country to fight back, often teaming up with rebel armies led by ethnic minorities who have been fighting the army for territory for decades. The NUG commands and funds many militias and has allied itself with some of the largest rebel armies.

The NUG declined VOA’s interview requests and ignored her emails.

At a press conference in January, however, its planning, finance and investment minister, Tin Tun Naing, said the NUG had raised more than $100 million so far. He said nearly half came from the sale of so-called Spring Revolution bonds, named after what resistance groups have dubbed Myanmar’s Spring Revolution. The bonds bear no interest and will only be redeemed if and when the junta falls.

He said the NUG had also collected more than $1.4 million in taxes on the roughly half of Myanmar that resistance groups would control or contest and would soon begin selling leases to gemstone mines still largely to hands of the junta. The NUG reportedly sold its first mining lease to an anonymous buyer for $4 million in February.

The shadow government has also auctioned off shares of real estate held or seized by the military, including a lakeside villa that junta leader Min Aung Hlaing uses when he is in Yangon, the commercial capital. from Myanmar. As with mining leases, investors cannot actually use what they have purchased until resistance gains.

Abuza said real estate auctions are particularly popular and are likely to overtake NUG bond revenues eventually, as people could actually profit from the property.

Although they often come in dribs and drabs, simple donations from around the world would also mean millions of dollars for the NUG and others.

From his New York home, Khin Moe, originally from Myanmar, auctions off rings, pendants and other glitzy jewelry for the cause online. At a maximum of $20 per raffle ticket, she said she could raise well over $1,000 per play.

She and a circle of friends and family also purchased approximately $10,000 worth of Spring Revolution Bonds. Khin Moe said his sister, who also lives in New York, even bought a unit in a building that the NUG designed and promised to build, one day, on land that the Myanmar military still holds.

They [the junta] want to control everyone with power. … They took all the prisoners and they killed the people and the students. The worst thing is that they took everyone’s freedom; we can’t accept it, she told VOA.

We trust…the leaders of the NUG [can] helping and supporting whatever people need in Burma, that’s why we trust them, and we bought the bonds, she added, using another name for Myanmar. We know that this type of bond does not earn interest, but we support because we trust.

Getting that money to the people it is intended for on the ground in Myanmar is another matter.

With the coup, the military took control of Myanmar’s central bank and quickly ordered local banks to monitor and block accounts suspected of funneling funds to resistance groups. He arrested those who transferred money through suspicious accounts and sentenced them to 10 years in prison with hard labor.

Hundi’s informal money transfer system, which uses networks of affiliated agents, helps them bypass banks but has its limitations.

As another workaround, the NUG last year launched the Digital Myanmar Kyat, or DMMK, a cryptocurrency pegged 1 to 1 to the real kyat based on blockchain technology designed to be difficult or impossible to block. It also launched a mobile wallet, NUGPay, allowing users to hold and trade the digital coins.

While still in its infancy, DMMK is helping the resistance move money in and around the country, said Soe, a blockchain expert who asked that his full name not be given. used for security reasons.

Soe trains non-governmental charities in Myanmar’s conflict zones to use cryptocurrencies and other blockchain tools to evade military banking restrictions and his alleged wiretapping on mobile networks, and he stays in touch with certain militias and rebel armies.

FILE – Members of the People’s Defense Forces (PDF) who took up arms against Myanmar’s military junta are seen at a frontline in Kawkareik, Myanmar, December 31, 2021.

The main thing is that the revolution needs the financial support of the people [of Myanmar] and other people from other countries. Using cryptography is one of the most secure ways to support, he told VOA. Not only the Myanmar army, [but] not every government in the world can control transactions on the blockchain.

However, the limited exchangeability of DMMK with other cryptocurrencies and the need for physical agents to cash in and withdraw funds has raised doubts about its ultimate usefulness for resistance. Soe said the scattered details the NUG has revealed about its plans for its next Spring Development Bank could address some of these issues, in part by using a blockchain network that is more compatible with other cryptocurrencies than the one hosting DMMK.

The NUG previously announced launch dates for online-only banking that have come and gone. At the end of June, local media announced its intention to put the bank into operation this month.

Myanmar’s armed resistance, however, gets away with a fraction of the billions of dollars the junta has at its disposal. If the NUG gets its bank working, it could prove a vital new lifeline, said Abuza, who has had confidential conversations with the NUG about its plans.

I have seen the details of Spring Bank and what they are offering and the interface they are going to use online, and I think it will be popular, he said.

This will be a source of revenue for the NUG, but it will also facilitate their other funding, including the lottery, land sales, bond sales, etc., he said. So if they can achieve that… it will be very important for them to support the revolution.

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