The Myanmar military junta has arrested and filed a case against the son-in-law of the country’s ex-dictator Than Shwe for allegedly “damaging the state’s peace and stability” through his Facebook posts, in a challenge to the old dictator who handpicked the current regime leader as military chief in 2011.
This is significant because former dictator Than Shwe is the mentor to current dictator Min Aung Hlaing (MAL). It was Than Shwe who picked MAL to be military chief of staff and future dictator.
This is comparatively pedantic, but have I not been reading news broadly enough, or is there actually a pattern of journalists using “junta” mainly for Latino and similar-looking tan people?
I basically never see it used to describe any African, Middle Eastern, East Asian, or Eastern European authoritarian police force. But I feel like I see it for South America and Southeast Asia relatively often.
Junta is often used for military regimes.