Myanmar’s bloodshed reveals a world that has changed, and hasn’t

How the country became primed for a sort of violence, and a sort of dictatorship, that had grown rare.

Young demonstrators flash the three-fingered symbol of resistance during a protest in Yangon on Sunday. AP

Max Fisher

Apr 9, 2021 – 12.00am

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Myanmar’s rulers have crossed a threshold few governments breach anymore: They have killed, by most estimates, more than 500 unarmed citizens of their own country.

Such massacres by government forces have, even in a time of rising nationalism and authoritarianism, been declining worldwide. This is the seventh in the past decade, compared with 23 in the 1990s, according to data from Uppsala University in Sweden.