Myanmar: Aung San Suu Kyi Detained in Military Coup
By RMN News Service
Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi who was heading the government in Myanmar has been detained in a military coup that was staged Monday (February 1).
Suu Kyi, Myanmar President Win Myint, and other leaders of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party were captured by the army in early morning raids. The detentions are said to be in response to the election fraud in the November election that NLD won. The election commission of Myanmar has rejected the military’s allegations of vote fraud.
Handing power to military chief Min Aung Hlaing, according to a Reuters report, the army has imposed a state of emergency for one year. It is believed that China has influenced the Myanmar military to stage coup against the elected government.
The coup was expected after the election as the tension between Suu Kyi’s civilian government and the military was escalating. After years of struggle, Suu Kyi, 75, had succeeded to bring democracy in Myanmar by winning the 2015 election.
She was accused of human rights violations when hundreds of thousands of Rohingya were forced to flee Myanmar’s western Rakhine state in 2017 after army operations against them.
In September last year, the European Parliament’s Conference of Presidents had decided to formally suspend Sakharov Prize laureate Suu Kyi from the Sakharov Prize Community. The punitive action was taken in response to her failure to act and her acceptance of the ongoing crimes against the Rohingya community in Myanmar.
