Myanmar: Military seizes power, Aung San Suu Kyi Detained

The military of Myanmar has seized power on Monday in a coup against the democratically elected government of Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in response to the election fraud.

According to the media reports, the other leaders of Aung San Suu Kyi ‘s National League for Democracy (NLD) party in early morning raids.

The military said in the statement that it had carried out the detentions in response to “election fraud”, handing power to military chief Min Aung Hlaing.

Moreover, a state of emergency has been imposed in the country for one year. Phone lines to the capital Naypyitaw and the main commercial centre of Yangon were not reachable, and state TV went off air hours before parliament had been due to sit for the first time since the NLD’s landslide election win in November, viewed as a referendum on Suu Kyi’s fledgling democratic government.

Moreover, the internet also disrupted in the country following the detentions of top leadership.

The detentions came after days of escalating tension between the civilian government and the military that stirred fears of a coup in the aftermath of the election. Last week, the tanks were deployed in some streets and pro-military demonstrations have taken place in some cities ahead of the first gathering of parliament. Myanmar’s election commission has rejected the military’s allegations of vote fraud.

Nobel Peace Prize winner Suu Kyi, 75, came to power after a 2015 election win that followed decades of house arrest in a struggle for democracy with Myanmar’s junta that turned her into an international icon.

Suu Kyi’s international standing was damaged after hundreds of thousands of Rohingya fled army operations into refuge from Myanmar’s western Rakhine state in 2017, but she remains hugely popular at home.

The constitution published in 2008 after decades of military rule reserves 25% of seats in parliament for the military and control of three key ministries in Suu Kyi’s administration.