Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s mayor who was deposed by the military in a coup d’état, was charged on Wednesday with an obscure violation of illegally importing at least 10 walkie-talkies, according to an official from her National League for Democracy. The offense is punishable by up to three years in prison.
The court order for detention, issued by officials of the party that ruled Myanmar until the putsch on Monday, dated the day of the coup and allows the detention of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi for 15 days. The document said soldiers searching her villa in Naypyidaw, the capital, found various communications equipment brought into the country without proper papers.
It was a bizarre postscript of a charged 48 hours in which the military put the country’s most popular leader back under house arrest and nullified hopes that the Southeast Asian nation could one day serve as a beacon of democracy in a world awash with rising authoritarianism. did.
The surprising use of walkie-talkies to justify the imprisonment of a Nobel Peace Prize winner reinforced the military’s tendency to use a fine-grained strategy to neutralize its greatest political rival. The impeached president of the country was also facing jail time for alleged violations of the coronavirus restrictions.
The coup overturned an elected government regarded by voters as the last line of defense against an army that had ruled the country outright for nearly five decades. During his five-year tenure, the National League for Democracy received two resounding mandates, most recently in the general election last November.
As the putsch progressed, the military resorted to the familiar playbook of dictatorship: shutting down Internet services, suspending flights, and detaining critics. Her most loyal ministers, Buddhist monks, writers, activists and a filmmaker were also arrested along with Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi.
Yet in the bewildered silence after the army’s takeover, few soldiers patrolled the streets. Monday night, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was back at her villa in Naypyidaw, instead of languishing in one of the country’s notorious prison cells. There were no further mass arrests and the internet came back online.
Relative peace – this so far appeared to be a largely bloodless coup d’état – prompted some people in Myanmar to cautiously raise their voices against the reintroduction of the military. While some people removed the flags of the National League for Democracy from outside their homes, others took part in small civil disobedience campaigns, hitting pots and pans or honking their car horns to protest the coup.
Dozens of mobile network workers stopped objecting to their employer’s military ties. Doctors in a hospital posed together, each with three fingers raised in a provocative greeting from the “Hunger Games” movies. The gesture has become a symbol of the pro-democracy demonstrations in neighboring Thailand, where there are also rumors of coups.
The charge against Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest for a total of 15 years before the generals released her in 2010, echoed previous allegations of esoteric legal crimes. In one case, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi had her detention extended because an American man swam unannounced to her lakeside villa, which caused her to violate the terms of her detention.
But when such crimes seem absurd, they have real consequences. The military had made a habit of sidelining political rivals and critics by saddling them with mysterious crimes.
Along with Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, President U Win Myint, one of her political acolytes who was also detained on Monday, was issued an arrest warrant for violating the coronavirus emergency rules. According to U Kyi Toe, the official for the National League for Democracy, he was accused of greeting a car full of supporters during last year’s election campaign season.
If Mr. Win Myint is found guilty, he could face three years in prison. Having a criminal record can prevent him from returning to the presidency.
On Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council, which had convened an emergency meeting on Myanmar, declined to issue a statement condemning the coup; China and Russia were against such a move.
In Washington, the State Department said it had concluded that the takeover of the military was indeed a coup d’etat, a label that will affect some US foreign aid to the country.
Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, staged its first coup in 1962, a bloody exercise that paved the way for nearly five decades of iron-fisted direct rule. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and leading figures of her National League for Democracy were incarcerated during what should have been their political peak.
The generals ordered massacres of pro-democracy protesters and sent soldiers to remove members of minority ethnic groups from their country. Even as the junta began to give a civilian administration some leeway to operate, it ensured that the military would still control much of the economic and political sphere.
Confirmation of the charges against Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who received the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her peaceful resistance to the military, trickled through Wednesday amid a whirlwind of rumors. Early in the afternoon, lawmakers from the National League for Democracy exchanged bits of misinformation, even while they were themselves in military detention.
It was rumored that she would be charged with high treason, a crime punishable by death. Another iteration said she was charged with electoral fraud. No one suspected walkie-talkies were involved in her alleged sin.
In a statement released Tuesday by the office of the army chief, senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the Tatmadaw said it had acted in the best interest of the citizens of Myanmar.
“For successive periods, the Myanmar Tatmadaw has used the motto ‘People Are the Parents’ when it comes to the people, ” the statement said, before insisting that massive fraud against voters in last November’s elections had forced her into a coup.
The National League for Democracy, which oversaw the country’s electoral commission, rejected the Tatmadaw’s accusation that voter manipulation had led to a bad showing by the military’s proxy party.
On Wednesday, lawmakers from the National League for Democracy locked up in their living quarters by soldiers released a statement saying they still supported Mr. Win Myint as president. They rejected suggestions that they had been relieved of their legislative duties. The national assembly would meet for the first time since the November elections on the day of the coup.
“Stop the intervention actions,” lawmakers warned the Tatmadaw. It seemed like a warning two days late.