Myanmar’s military has staged a coup to seize power, with State Senior Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and a number of senior party officials arrested by the military in an early morning search operation, alleging that a number of elected leaders were involved in general election fraud. The military has taken control of the government and parliament in many parts of Myanmar and declared a one-year state of emergency with the transfer of state power to Defense Force Commander-in-Chief Min Aung Hlaing, with widespread communication disruptions in the capital Naypyidaw and other places.
● Myanmar banking system to be temporarily closed due to network instability, Singapore’s Channel NewsAsia reporter May Wong said that the Yangon street flow significantly reduced, only the bank teller machine long lines, many people try to withdraw money, some people described many local people are panic rush to buy supplies
Yangon has long lines of bank teller machines. (Internet)
Aye Min Thant, a Burmese-American correspondent for Reuters in Myanmar, said that Myanmar state TV has cancelled all programs on Monday, and the local Internet service is very unstable. More local shoppers than usual went to the market, where all National League for Democracy flags have disappeared and some bank teller machines have stopped operating
After the coup in Burma, there are more shoppers than usual in the market. (Internet)
● Myanmar’s military announces a one-year takeover of the country, meaning a coup d’état and a one-year state of emergency. The military says there was fraud in the general election and arrested senior state minister Aung San Suu Kyi and others, and Aung San is now under house arrest.
●UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres strongly condemns the military’s arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi and civilian government officials and urges the military to respect the choice of the Burmese people.
The U.S. stated that it opposes any attempt to reverse the election results or impede the transition to democracy, and that it will take action if the military does not rectify the situation in a timely manner.
● Burma’s telecommunications services have been disrupted following the detention of Aung San and others, with Internet monitoring service NetBlocks revealing that local Internet connections have dropped to 44 percent of their usual rate
Witnesses say a large number of military personnel have been deployed to the Yangon city government offices in the main city of Yangon
A spokesman said… “We have learned that the president and the senior minister of state have been detained in Naypyidaw …… We have heard that they have been taken away by the military. Based on the current situation, we assume that the military is staging a coup,” he said. I want to tell the people not to act rashly and I want them to obey the law,” he said, anticipating his own arrest.
State-run TV station says technical glitch prevents broadcast
Shortly after Aung San Suu Kyi’s arrest, Myanmar’s state-run TV and radio stations announced on Facebook later that they were experiencing technical difficulties, “due to the current communication difficulties, we would like to inform you that the normal programs of the TV and radio stations cannot be broadcast”.
The National League for Democracy (NLD), led by Senior Minister Aung San Suu Kyi, won at least 368 seats in the parliamentary elections last November, exceeding the threshold of 322 seats to remain in power. However, the pro-military opposition Union Solidarity Development Party (USDP) claimed that the election was unfair and demanded the dissolution of the EC and a re-vote.
Although the USDP has not been able to provide substantive evidence for the allegations, political observers have analyzed that the EAC is composed of a number of obsequious people who may not dare to offend the military, and have long predicted political chaos in the coming months. Last week, a military spokesman quoted Myanmar Defense Force chief Min Aung Hlaing as saying that the election was “dishonest and unfair,” and when asked if the military would stage a coup, the spokesman refused to rule out the possibility.
Aung San Suu Kyi has been strongly criticized by the international community for her crackdown on the Rohingya in recent years. The Rakhine State Rohingya Salvation Army, a militant group, attacked 31 military and police facilities in Myanmar’s southwestern Rakhine State in 2017, and the Myanmar military cracked down, returning fire to the entire Rohingya community, killing about 10,000 people and sending some 700,000 to neighboring Bangladesh as refugees. The United Nations has issued a report on the investigation, accusing Daw Aung San, as senior minister of state, of “contributing to the atrocities” and characterizing the crackdown by the Burmese military and the Rohingya as “genocidal in intent”.
Human rights groups have also criticized Myanmar authorities for denying nearly 2 million people, especially the Rohingya, the right to vote on security grounds before the election, but the National League for Democracy’s resounding victory shows that Aung San Suu Kyi is still loved by the country’s ethnic Burmese majority.
Experts urge West to strengthen sanctions against Myanmar
John Sifton, advocacy director for Asia at Human Right Watch, criticized the arrest of Aung San as a reflection of local political realities, saying that the Burmese military has not really left the center of power for decades and urged the United States and the West to send a clear message to the Burmese military by re-tightening sanctions against the country. Japan, South Korea and other countries should also suspend investment in Myanmar.
Murray Hiebert, a regional expert on Southeast Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said that although the U.S. government has recently asked the military not to launch a coup against Aung San, it is unknown what specific actions the U.S. can take in response, considering that the U.S. has already sanctioned Myanmar’s military hierarchy.
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