Naypyitaw: Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup against the democratically elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, who was detained along with other leaders of her party in early morning raids. Western nations condemned the sudden turn of events, which derailed years of efforts to establish democracy in the poverty-stricken country and raised even more questions over the prospect of returning a million Rohingya refugees.
The UN Security Council calls for a strong response. The army said it had responded to “election fraud”, handing power to military chief General Min Aung Hlaing and imposing a state of emergency for a year in the country, also known as Burma, where neighbouring China has a powerful influence.
The generals made their move hours before parliament had been due to sit for the first time since the National League for Democracy’s (NLD) landslide win in a Nov. 8 election viewed as a referendum on Suu Kyi’s fledgling democratic rule. The NLD said Suu Kyi had called on people to protest against the military takeover, quoting comments it said had been written in anticipation of a coup.
Phone and internet connections in the capital, Naypyitaw, and the main commercial centre Yangon were disrupted and state television went off air after the NLD leaders were detained. Summarising a meeting of the new junta, the military said Min Aung Hlaing, who had been nearing retirement, had pledged to practice a “genuine discipline-flourishing multiparty democratic system”. He promised a free and fair election and a handover of power to the winning party, it said, without giving a timeframe.
The junta later removed 24 ministers and named 11 replacements to oversee ministries including finance, defence, foreign affairs and interior. Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and other NLD leaders were “taken” in the early hours of the morning, NLD spokesman Myo Nyunt said and at least 45 people had been detained.
Troops and riot police stood by in Yangon where residents rushed to markets to stock up on supplies and others lined up at ATMs to withdraw cash. Banks suspended services but said they would reopen later. Foreign companies from Japanese retail giant Aeon to South Korean trading firm POSCO International and Norway’s Telenor scrambled to reach staff in Myanmar and assess the turmoil.
Multinationals moved into the country after Suu Kyi’s party established the first civilian government in half a century in 2015. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s election win followed decades of house arrest and struggle against the military, which had seized power in a 1962 coup and stamped out all dissent for decades.
While still hugely popular at home, her international standing was severely damaged after she failed to stop the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas in 2017. The detentions came after days of tension between the civilian government and the military in the aftermath of the most recent election, in which Suu Kyi’s party won 83% of the vote.
An army takeover would put Myanmar “back under a dictatorship”, the pre-written statement on Facebook quoted Suu Kyi as saying. “I urge people not to accept this, to respond and wholeheartedly to protest against the coup by the military,” it said.
