BANGKOK – Myanmar’s civilian leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and other officials were detained in early morning raids on Monday, the government said as the country was rife with rumors of an impending coup.
A spokesman for the ruling National League for Democracy confirmed the arrests, and the internet seemed to be down in two major cities in Myanmar.
Myanmar has been celebrated as a rare instance of generals voluntarily handing over some power to citizens, honoring the 2015 election results in the Southeast Asian nation that ushered in the National League for Democracy.
The stalwarts of that party had spent years in prison for their political opposition to the military. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, the patron saint of the political party, has been under house arrest for 15 years and won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her nonviolent resistance to the junta that imprisoned her.
But the military, led by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, has retained important resources in the country, and the detention of top government leaders seemed to prove the lie in its commitment to democracy.
“The doors just opened to a very different future,” said Thant Myint-U, a Myanmar historian. “I feel like no one can really decide what comes next.”
“Remember that Myanmar is a country overrun with weapons, with deep divisions about ethnic and religious lines, where millions can barely feed themselves,” he added.
The unrest was ostensibly triggered by concerns over election fraud in November, which caused an even bigger landslide for the National League for Democracy than five years earlier. The ruling party won 396 of the 476 seats in parliament, while the army’s proxy party, the Union Solidarity and Development Party, managed only 33.
The Union Solidarity and Development Party wept viciously, as did the political parties representing hundreds of thousands of ethnic minorities who had been deprived of their rights shortly before the vote, because the areas where they lived were supposedly too occupied by struggles for elections to take place. Members of the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority, who have been victims of what international prosecutors call an army genocide campaign, were also unable to vote.
“They should have resolved it from the start,” said U Sai Nyunt Lwin, the vice president of the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy, which represents the Shan ethnic group, referring to the bickering between Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s forces. and the military. , which grew after the November election.
The arrests came just two days after António Guterres, the United Nations Secretary-General, warned of provocations. Mr Guterres called on “all actors to refrain from any form of incitement or provocation, to show leadership and adhere to democratic norms and to respect the outcome of the November 8 general election.”
In recent years, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, once celebrated as an international human rights champion for her campaign of conscience against the junta while under house arrest, emerged as one of the military’s greatest public defenders. Despite a mountain of evidence against the military, she has publicly rejected allegations that the security forces were carrying out a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya.
But with its enduring national popularity and its party being given a different electoral mandate, the generals began to visibly lose patience with the civil government facade they had designed.
Last week, an army spokesman declined to rule out the possibility of a coup, and General Min Aung Hlaing said the constitution could be scrapped if the law is broken. Armored vehicles appeared on the streets of two cities, scaring residents unaccustomed to seeing such firepower cruising through urban centers.
But on Saturday, the military appeared to be stepping back and issued a statement saying that as an armed organization it was bound by law, including the constitution. Another statement on Sunday said it was “the one who adhered to democratic standards.”
The arrest of the senior civil government leaders took place hours before Parliament was due to begin its inaugural session after the November elections.
The country was buzzing with rumors of coups d’état for days, prompting a number of diplomatic missions, including that of the United States, on Friday to “push the military and all other parties in the country to adhere to democratic standards.”
“We are against any attempt to change the outcome of the elections or hinder Myanmar’s democratic transition,” the joint diplomatic statement said.
The military fired back on Sunday with a statement of its own, urging diplomatic missions in the country to “not make unfounded assumptions about the situation.”