01 February 21
It's Live on the HomePage Now:
Reader Supported News
RSN: Jessica Allee | Myanmar's Military Brazenly Seizes Full Control in Coup
Jessica Allee, Reader Supported News
Allee writes: "The military of Myanmar executed a coup in the early morning hours Monday. They began with the arrest of the country's highest-ranking leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, and President Win Myint and have detained many other high-level politicians."
News of the takeover was first reported by military-owned Myawaddy TV with a declaration of a national state of emergency for one year. According to the outlet, the military is justifying its actions with a section of the constitution it wrote, which states that the country may be controlled by its armed forces in times of emergency. That emergency, apparently, is the military’s claims of voter fraud, despite numerous observers and the governmental Union Election Commission verifying the November results that clinched victory for Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party. This all comes on the day Parliament was to begin its new NLD-led session.
As communications were cut in the major city of Naypyidaw, the military (Tatmadaw) announced that it would transfer the country’s legislative, administrative and judicial power to its Commander in Chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing. The acting president will be retired general Myint Swe, who had been serving as Vice President since 2016 when he was brought in by his party as a hardliner to resist the pro-democratic NLD president. Both men have a history of corruption and human rights abuses.
Independent media news site The Irrawady has reported that a number of NLD ministers were detained in Naypyidaw. They had shared pre-recorded videos of their situation, purportedly concerned over the past few days that something like this would happen, given the recent rhetoric of the military and its proxy parties. Over the past week, the Tatmadaw have continued to reject the findings of the electoral commission, continued to claim election fraud and, when pressed, even refused to rule out military action. As a result, Myanmar’s peoples and press have been on high alert, with some preparing for a worst-case scenario.
Since the events of Monday morning, some citizens are rushing to withdraw money from banks as communications remain spotty. Others are lying low, hoping to determine in the coming days what stance the military will take on upholding democratic rights and values. Outside troops patrol the streets in major cities. Regarding the press, Myanmar journalist Nyan Lynn, who is a Ph.D. student in Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of Kansas, says: “Some journalists are moving their important data and documents to the secure location. Generally speaking, we really don’t know how the military will treat private independent media outlets that reported critical stories about its recent demands.” Condemnation has been voiced by world leaders and onlookers alike. Protests took place outside the country’s embassy in Bangkok, Thailand. Australia urged the release of the detained leaders, while the US suggested that it might take action. China acknowledged the situation and passively called for stability. Inside Myanmar, the NLP issued a statement on behalf of Aung San Suu Kyi calling for protests.
So what does this mean for democracy? In the past decade, Myanmar has experienced an expansion of democratic rights for its citizens as a result of considerable popular struggle and subsequent nascent power-sharing administrations. However, any administration is only as good as the sum of its leaders’ values. The NLP with embattled Aung San Suu Kyi as a de facto head struggling against a powerful military known for human rights abuses doesn’t add up to equality. Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, has herself become an enabler and apologist for the genocide of the Rohingya at the hands of the military. Unfortunately, the prospects for any justice and equitable solution for Myanmar’s minority groups seem slim under a totalitarian administration bent on only preserving the ruling class.
The military has long held a firm grip on politics in Myanmar and some claim that this coup is just making evident what has long been feared: that their democracy is fragile, and the military elite form a dangerous hegemony that must be broken up.
Jessica Allee is a staff editor for Reader Supported News.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.