Myanmar’s ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) spokesman said Feb. 1 that Senior State Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and other senior ruling party officials were “taken into custody by the military” in an early morning raid.
The National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, won enough seats to form a new government in last November’s federal parliamentary elections, but the military said the vote was fraudulent. Myanmar’s Union Election Commission on Jan. 28 denied the military’s allegations of fraud in last year’s election and said it found no evidence that could affect the election’s credibility. Earlier, the military had threatened to “take action” and did not rule out the option of a coup d’etat.
Myanmar National League for Democracy spokesman Myo Nyunt told Reuters by phone that Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and other leaders were “taken away” by the military in the early hours of Monday. He said, “I want to tell our people not to respond rashly and I hope they act in accordance with the law.” He added that “with what we are seeing now, we have to assume that the military is staging a coup” and expects to be detained himself.
Jonathan Head, the BBC’s correspondent in Southeast Asia, reported that soldiers were on the streets of Myanmar’s capital Naypyidaw and the main city of Yangon. Telephone and Internet lines in Naypyidaw have been cut, according to the BBC’s bureau in Burma. The soldiers also went to the homes of chief ministers in several regions to take them away, sources said. On Saturday, the Burma Defense Force had pledged to abide by the constitution amid growing fears that they were preparing a coup.
On Friday, several diplomatic missions in Myanmar, including Australia, Canada and the European Union, had reportedly issued a joint statement warning of a military coup in the country. The Burmese military, for its part, accused the foreign missions of making “unfounded assumptions” on Sunday.
According to the latest news, Burma’s state television has just canceled its radio and broadcast programs for Monday. And it’s not just the leaders of the National League for Democracy in Burma, many leaders of ethnic parties and student leaders have been detained in the past few hours.
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