The party of Myanmar’s toppled leader Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday demanded her immediate release, after a military coup that triggered global condemnation and sanctions threats from the new US president.
Armed troops patrolled the capital, Naypyidaw, where Aung San Suu Kyi and other National League for Democracy (NLD) party leaders were detained in pre-dawn raids on Monday just ahead of the scheduled resumption of parliament.
Soldiers were also stationed outside the dormitories for lawmakers in Naypyidaw, with one NLD lawmaker describing it as “an open-air detention center.”
“We are not allowed to go outside,” she told Agence France-Presse by telephone, requesting anonymity for fear of the military. “We are very worried.”
Despite the intimidation, a statement was posted on the NLD’s verified Facebook page calling for Aung San Suu Kyi’s release, as well as Myanmar President Win Myint and all detained party members.
“We see this as a stain on the history of the State and the Tatmadaw,” it said, referring to the military by its Burmese name.
It also demanded the military “recognize the confirmed result of the 2020 general election.”
By afternoon, a party officer said they still have not had direct contact with Aung San Suu Kyi, though a neighbor sighted the de facto leader in her Naypyidaw residence.
“According to her neighbor we contacted, she walks sometimes in her compound to let others know she’s in good health,” NLD press officer Kyi Toe said.
Myint Swe, the man installed by army leaders as Myanmar’s president after the coup, is best known abroad for his role in the crackdown on 2007 pro-democracy protests and for his ties to still-powerful military leaders.
He was the army-appointed vice president when he was named on Monday to take over after the military arrested Aung San Suu Kyi and other NLD leaders.
Immediately after he was named president, Myint Swe handed power to the top military commander, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.
Under Myanmar’s 2008 constitution, the president can hand power to the military commander in cases of emergency. That is one of many ways the military is assured of keeping ultimate control of the country.
Min Aung Hliang, 64, has been commander of the armed forces since 2011 and is due to retire soon. That would clear the way for him to take a civilian leadership role if the junta holds elections in a year’s time as promised.
The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party’s (USDP) humiliating loss in the elections in November last year would likely have precluded that. The military justified the coup by saying the government failed to address claims of election fraud.
“It seems there’s been the realization that Min Aung Hlaing’s retirement is coming and he expected to move into a senior role,” said Gerard McCarthy, a postdoctoral fellow at the Asia Research Institute. “The fact that the USDP couldn’t deliver that sparked a realization that the system itself isn’t designed to create the outcomes that they expected.”
The US government in 2019 put Min Aung Hlaing on a blacklist on grounds of engaging in “serious human rights abuse” for leading army troops in security operations in Rakhine region.
International human rights investigators said the military conducted what amounted to ethnic cleansing operations that prompted about 700,000 members of the Rohingya minority to flee, burning people out of their homes and committing other atrocities.
In 2017, Myint Swe led an investigation that denied such allegations, saying the military acted “lawfully.”
In 2019, the US Department of the Treasury froze Min Aung Hliang’s US-based assets, and banned doing business with him and three other military leaders. Earlier, it banned him from visiting the US. Min Aung Hlaing was also among more than a dozen Burmese officials removed from Facebook in 2018. His Twitter account was also closed.
Myint Swe, now elevated to president, formerly was among military leaders included in an earlier US Treasury list of sanctioned Burmese officials and business figures. That designation was removed in 2016 as the US sought to support the country’s economic development after nearly a half decade of reforms.
Myint Swe, 69, is a close ally of former junta leader Than Shwe, who stepped down to allow the transition to a quasi-civilian government beginning in 2011.
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