BANGKOK – Myanmar’s civilian leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and other officials were detained in the early hours of Monday morning, the government said while the country was full of rumors of a looming coup.
A spokesman for the ruling National League for Democracy confirmed the arrest and the internet seems to be in two major cities in Myanmar.
Myanmar was celebrated as a rare case in which generals willingly handed over the power to civilians to honor the 2015 election results in the Southeast Asian country that ushered in the National League for Democracy.
The stalwarts of that party spent years in prison for their political opposition to the military. Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, the patron saint of the political party, spent 15 years under house arrest and in 1991 won a Nobel Peace Prize for her violent resistance to the junta that locked her up.
But the army, led by senior general Min Aung Hlaing, has maintained important power levers in the country, and the detention of top government leaders has apparently proved the lie in its commitment to democracy.
“The doors have just opened for a very different future,” said Thant Myint-U, a Myanmar historian. “I have a sinking feeling that no one will really be able to control what comes next.”
“Remember, Myanmar is a country of arms, with deep divisions across ethnic and religious boundaries, where millions can barely feed themselves,” he added.
The unrest was apparently sparked by concerns about fraud in the November election that delivered an even greater landslide to the National League for Democracy than it had enjoyed five years earlier. The ruling party won 396 of the 476 seats in parliament, while the armed forces of the army, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, managed only 33.
The Union Solidarity and Development Party cried foul, as did political parties representing hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities who were released shortly before the vote because the areas where they lived were too much seized by strife to hold elections. Members of the Rohingya-Muslim minority in the country, who were the victims of what international prosecutors call a genocide campaign by the military, were also unable to cast their vote.
“They should have solved it from the beginning,” said U Sai Nyunt Lwin, vice president of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, which represents the Shan ethnic group, referring to the dispute between Aung San Suu Kyi’s forces and the army. , which grew after the November election.
The arrest came just two days after UN Secretary-General António Guterres warned against any provocations. Mr. Guterres called on “all actors to refrain from any form of incitement or provocation, to demonstrate leadership and to adhere to democratic norms and to respect the outcome of the November 8 general election.”
In recent years, Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, who was once celebrated as an international human rights champion for her conscience campaign against the junta while under house arrest, has emerged as one of the army’s biggest public defenders. Despite a mountain of evidence against the army, she has publicly denied allegations that the security forces waged a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya.
But with her national popularity, and her party gaining another election mandate, the generals began to lose patience with the facade of civilian rule they had designed.
Last week, an army spokesman refused to rule out the possibility of a coup, and General Min Aung Hlaing said the Constitution could be scrapped if the law is violated. Armored vehicles appear in the streets of two cities, disabling residents to see such firepower pass through urban centers.
But on Saturday, it appears the military is stepping down and announcing a statement that it, as an armed organization, is bound by the law, including the Constitution. Another statement Sunday said it was “the one who meets democratic standards”.
The arrest of the senior civilian government leaders took place a few hours before parliament would begin the opening session after the November election.
The country has been teeming with coups for days, calling on a number of diplomatic missions, including those of the United States, on Friday to urge the military and all other parties in the country to adhere to democratic norms.
“We are against any attempt to change the outcome of the election or to impede the democratic transition of Myanmar,” the joint diplomatic statement said.
The army fired back on Sunday with its own statement, urging diplomatic missions in the country “not to make unfounded assumptions about the situation.”