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Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese civilian leader ousted by the military in a coup, was charged on Wednesday with an obscure offense of illegally importing at least 10 walkie-talkies, an official said. party of the National League for Democracy. The violation can be punishable by up to three years in prison.
The court’s detention order, provided by officials from the party that ruled Myanmar until Monday’s coup, was dated the day of the coup and authorizes Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s detention for 15 days. The document said soldiers searching his villa in Naypyidaw, the capital, found various communications equipment that had been brought into the country without proper paperwork.
It was a bizarre postscript to the tense 48 hours in which the military brought the country’s most popular leader back under house arrest and extinguished hope that the Southeast Asian nation could one day serve. beacon of democracy in a world awash with growing authoritarianism.
The surprise use of walkie-talkies to justify locking up a Nobel Peace Prize winner reinforced the military’s penchant for using fine-grained strategy to neutralize its biggest political rival. The country’s ousted president also risked jail time for alleged violations of coronavirus restrictions.
The coup toppled an elected government that was seen by voters as the last line of defense against an army that had ruled the country for nearly five decades. During its five-year tenure, the National League for Democracy received two resounding terms, most recently in the general election last November.
As the pre-dawn putsch progressed, the military resorted to the familiar playbook of dictatorship: shutting down internet service, suspending flights, and detaining its critics. Along with Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, her most loyal ministers, Buddhist monks, writers, activists and a filmmaker were also arrested.
Yet in the stunned silence that followed the military seizure of power, few soldiers patrolled the streets. On Monday evening, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was back at her villa in Naypyidaw, rather than languishing in one of the country’s notorious prison cells. There were no further mass detentions and the internet came back online.
The relative peace – it seemed, until now, to be a bloodless coup – has prompted some in Myanmar to cautiously speak out against the reestablishment of military rule. While some people removed the flags of the National League for Democracy from outside their homes, others took part in small campaigns of civil disobedience, hitting saucepans or car horns in protest against the coup d ‘State.
Dozens of workers from the same mobile network have resigned to oppose their employer’s military ties. Doctors at a hospital posed together, each with three fingers raised in a provocative salute from the “Hunger Games” movies. The gesture has become a symbol of pro-democracy protests in neighboring Thailand, where rumors of a coup have also swirled.
The charge against Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who served a total of 15 years under house arrest before the generals released her in 2010, echoed previous charges of esoteric legal crimes. In one case, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi had her closed session because an American swam to her lakeside villa out of the blue, causing her to violate the conditions of her detention.
But if such crimes seem absurd, they have real consequences. The military had developed a habit of dismissing political rivals and critics by overwhelming them with obscure offenses.
Along with Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, President U Win Myint, one of his political acolytes who was also detained on Monday, received a detention warrant for violating emergency coronavirus regulations. He was accused of welcoming a car full of supporters during the election campaign last year, according to U Kyi Toe, head of the National League for Democracy.
If convicted, Mr. Win Myint faces three years in prison. Possession of a criminal record could prevent him from returning to the presidency.
On Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council, which had called an emergency private meeting on Myanmar, refused to issue a statement condemning the coup; China and Russia opposed such a move.
In Washington, the State Department said it had concluded the military takeover was, indeed, a coup, a label that will affect some of US foreign aid to the country.
Myanmar’s military, known as Tatmadaw, staged its first coup in 1962, a bloody exercise that paved the way for nearly five decades of direct iron-fisted rule. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and the leaders of her National League for Democracy were locked up during what should have been their political heyday.
The generals ordered the massacres of pro-democracy protesters and dispatched soldiers to drive members of ethnic minority groups from their lands. Even when the junta began to give a civilian administration space to operate, it ensured that the military would still control much of the economic and political sphere.
Confirmation of the charges against Aung San Suu Kyi, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her peaceful resistance to the military, spread on Wednesday amid a whirlwind of rumors. Early in the afternoon, lawmakers from the National League for Democracy exchanged scraps of disinformation, even though they were themselves detained by the military.
She is rumored to be charged with high treason, a crime that carries the death penalty. Another iteration said she was charged with voter fraud. No one guessed that his supposed sin would involve walkie-talkies.
In a statement issued Tuesday by the office of the chief of the army, Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the Tatmadaw said he acted in the best interests of the citizens of Myanmar.
“Throughout successive periods, Myanmar’s Tatmadaw has kept in mind the motto ‘People are relatives’, as far as the people are concerned,” the statement said, before insisting that massive electoral fraud during the elections last November had forced him to stage a coup.
The National League for Democracy, which oversaw the country’s electoral commission, dismissed the Tatmadaw’s charge that the manipulation of voters led to the party’s poor performance by proxy for the military.
National League for Democracy lawmakers who had been confined to their living quarters by soldiers on Wednesday released a statement saying they still supported Mr. Win Myint as president. They rejected suggestions that they had been relieved of their legislative functions. The National Assembly was supposed to meet for the first time since the November elections, on the very day of the coup.
“Stop the intervention actions,” warned Tatmadaw lawmakers. It seemed like a warning two days too late.
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