SULLIVAN: But she says even without a plan.ĬALLAHAN: This crisis was inevitable given the cohabitation that the 2008 Constitution imposed upon political and personal foes or enemies. MARY CALLAHAN: I don't even know if they have a plan. SULLIVAN: Mary Callahan, a Myanmar scholar at the University of Washington who is in the former capital, Yangon, isn't so sure. I think it's them holding onto power indefinitely. MATHIESON: The endgame, I think, is quite disturbing. SULLIVAN: David Mathieson is a Yangon-based analyst reached in Thailand.
SULLIVAN: That's assuming the military cares.ĭAVID MATHIESON: I think they probably calculated that they've got friends in the world that will be disappointed in them but will ultimately put their own self-interests to the fore and let them get away with it. THUZAR: The global political and economic climate will just be very unfavorable for a military junta seeking to justify its actions, I think. But today, she insists, things are different than they were 30 years ago. SULLIVAN: What happened then, she says, was that Aung San Suu Kyi's party won convincingly, a victory the military then refused to recognize. The promise was to convene elections and hand over power to the party that won the elections.
She has a long memory and recalls a similar promise made by the military after a student-led uprising decades ago. Moe Thuzar of the Institute for Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore isn't buying. MICHAEL SULLIVAN, BYLINE: The military says its state of emergency will only last a year.
After a coup deposed the government of former democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, the military claims massive election fraud that saw Suu Kyi's party win overwhelmingly in November's general election. Treasury Department.Īdditional reporting came from ABC News’ Conor Finnegan, Ben Gittleson, Karson Yiu and Morgan Winsor.The country of Myanmar is under military control again. In total, 10 leaders of the Myanmar military have been placed under sanctions, and three businesses linked to the military have had their assets frozen, according to the U.S. sanctions for their roles in the military's attacks on the Rohingya. The junta’s “acting president,” commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing, and his deputy, Soe Win, were already under U.S. “In a democracy, force should never seek to overrule the will of the people or attempt to erase the outcome of a credible election.” “The military’s seizure of power in Burma, the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi and other civilian officials, and the declaration of a national state of emergency are a direct assault on the country’s transition to democracy and the rule of law,” Biden said in a written statement earlier this week. In a letter to the speaker of House, Nancy Pelosi, Biden described the coup as a “threat to the national security and foreign policy.” President Joe Biden signed an executive order to allow sanctions to be imposed on those connected to the coup. On Thursday, Facebook announced that it has moved to reduce the distribution of information from accounts linked to Myanmar’s military, suspended the junta’s ability to send removal request and have vowed to protect “political speech that allows the people of Myanmar to express themselves and to show the world what is transpiring inside their country.”Įarlier this week. The junta are in the process of creating an internet security bill, which would make internet providers hand over users’ personal information. To quell the protests, the ruling junta have shut down internet access in parts of the country and instituted a nationwide curfew, but protesters have continued to take to the streets en masse. We are peacefully protesting, they can’t do anything, the police, the military can’t do anything.” This time it cannot be like this, we cannot have this event again,” he said. “So many people were killed by the military. He believes that Myanmar’s younger generation, having tasted democracy for the first time, are better prepared to resist the return to military rule. Myae Aung led an estimated 100 protesters to the U.S. MORE: Myanmar army seizes power in apparent coup, declares state of emergency