President Joe Biden talks about the situation in Myanmar in the South Court Auditorium of the Eisenhower Executive Office building in Washington, DC, February 10, 2021.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
President Joe Biden announced on Wednesday that he would impose sanctions on military leaders in Myanmar, which led to the coup that ousted and detained his elected leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, President Win Myint and others.
Biden also said that the “army in Myanmar must relinquish the power it seized and release its prisoners.
“We will identify a first round of targets this week, and we will also introduce strong export controls,” Biden said when announcing two new executive orders related to the sanctions.
The president has said he will ban Burmese generals from gaining access to $ 1 billion in Myanmar funds in the United States.
Biden also said: “We are freezing US assets that benefit the Burmese government while maintaining our support for health care, civil society groups and other areas that directly benefit the people of Burma.”
And he urged the military not to use force against protesters exercising their democratic rights to protest against the coup.
Biden last week condemned the military takeover of the civilian government, calling it a “direct attack on the country’s transition to democracy and the rule of law.”
Foreign Ministry spokesman Ned Price later said when asked about the sanctions: “We think we can certainly impose significant costs on those responsible for this.”
“We can impose costs that are … even steeper” than previous sanctions against Myanmar, Price said.
Asked by a reporter why Biden’s announcement did not include an international response to the coup, Price suggested that such a response was imminent.
“As you hear more from our partners, it will be very clear that what we are rolling out collectively will entail those who are responsible for this coup, steep and deep costs,” Price said.
Nobel laureate Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won the Myanmar election last November by a landslide.
But the generals behind the coup claimed the election was fraudulent.
Myanmar citizens, including monks and nurses, took to the streets in protest of the coup, draped in the red color of the NLD party.
In response, the military banned marches and rallies of more than five people, along with motorized marches, and set an evening clock from 8pm to 4pm for Yangon and Mandalay, the country’s first and second largest cities.
The military has also banned citizens’ use of the social media platforms Facebook, Twitter and Instagram “until further notice.”
The US formally eased formal sanctions against Myanmar in 2012 to allow US dollars into the country, with certain investments in the military of Myanmar and its Ministry of Defense.
But a clause in the move included the ability to strengthen sanctions against ‘those who undermine the reform process and commit human rights violations’.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said last week: “We have certainly seen with great horror what has happened in Burma, but I do not currently see a US military role.