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BANGKOK – Myanmar’s civilian leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other officials were arrested on Monday morning in raids, the government said amid rumors of an impending coup.
A spokesperson for the ruling National League for Democracy confirmed the detentions, and the internet appears to be down in two major cities in Myanmar.
Myanmar has been celebrated as a rare instance in which generals have voluntarily ceded some power to civilians, honoring the 2015 election results in the Southeast Asian nation that inaugurated the National League for Democracy.
The pillars of this party had spent years in prison for their political opposition to the army. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, the patron saint of the political party, spent 15 years under house arrest and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her nonviolent resistance to the junta that locked her up.
But the military, led by Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, has maintained significant levers of power in the country, and the detention of senior government officials seems to prove the lie in its commitment to democracy.
“The doors have just opened to a very different future,” said Thant Myint-U, a Myanmar historian. “I have a grim feeling that no one will be able to really control what comes next.”
“Remember that Myanmar is a country awash with weapons, with deep divisions between ethnic and religious borders, where millions of people can barely feed themselves,” he added.
The turmoil was ostensibly sparked by concerns about fraud in the November election which caused an even bigger landslide for the National League for Democracy than five years earlier. The ruling party won 396 out of 476 seats in parliament, while the army’s proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, only managed 33.
The Union Solidarity and Development Party cried foul, as did political parties representing hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities who were disenfranchised shortly before the vote because the regions they lived in were supposed to being too conflicted for elections to take place. Members of the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority, who fell victim to what international prosecutors are calling an army genocidal campaign, were also unable to vote.
“They should have solved it from the start,” said U Sai Nyunt Lwin, vice president of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, which represents the Shan ethnic group, referring to the feuds between Ms. Aung San Suu’s forces. Kyi and the army. , which increased after the November elections.
The detentions came just two days after António Guterres, the Secretary-General of the United Nations, warned against any provocation. Mr. Guterres called on “all actors to refrain from any form of incitement or provocation, to show leadership and to adhere to democratic standards and to respect the result of the general elections of 8 November”.
In recent years, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, once celebrated as an international human rights champion for her campaign of conscience against the junta while under house arrest, has become one of the foremost public defenders of the army. Despite a mountain of evidence against the military, she publicly rejected accusations that the security forces waged a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya.
But with his enduring national popularity and his party receiving another electoral mandate, the generals visibly began to lose patience with the facade of civilian rule they had devised.
Last week, an army spokesperson refused to rule out the possibility of a coup, and Gen. Min Aung Hlaing said the constitution could be repealed if the law was broken. Armored vehicles appeared on the streets of two towns, scaring locals who were not used to seeing such firepower rush through urban centers.
But on Saturday, the military appeared to take a step back, issuing a statement saying that as an armed organization it was bound by law, including the Constitution. Another statement on Sunday said it was “the one who adhered to democratic standards.”
The detention of top civilian government officials took place just hours before parliament began its opening session after the November elections.
The country had been buzzing with rumors of a coup for days, prompting a number of diplomatic missions, including that of the United States on Friday, to “urge the military and all other parts of the country to adhere to democratic standards.” .
“We oppose any attempt to alter the outcome of the elections or hinder Myanmar’s democratic transition,” the joint diplomatic statement said.
The military retaliated with its own statement on Sunday, urging diplomatic missions in the country “not to make unwarranted assumptions about the situation.”
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