Naypyidaw, Myanmar,

Tens of thousands of anti-coup protesters rallied across Myanmar again on Monday despite a clear threat from the junta that it was prepared to use lethal force to crush what it branded “anarchy”.

The warning came after three demonstrators were shot dead over the weekend, and the funeral on Sunday for a young woman who died from bullet wounds at an earlier rally.

Massive street demonstrations have taken place since Myanmar’s military staged a coup on February 1 and detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, ending a decade-long experiment with democracy.

A civil disobedience campaign has also since choked many government operations, as well as businesses and banks, and the junta late Sunday gave its most ominous signal yet that its patience was nearing an end.

“Protesters are now inciting the people, especially emotional teenagers and youths, to a confrontation path where they will suffer the loss of life,” said a statement on state-run broadcaster MRTV.

The statement, read out in Burmese with text of the English version on the screen, cautioned protesters against inciting “riot and anarchy”.

Protesters on Monday were undeterred by the warning, with tens of thousands rallying in Yangon, Myanmar’s biggest city and commercial hub.

“We came out today to join in the protest, to fight until we win,” said Kyaw Kyaw, a 23-year-old university student.

“We are worried about the crackdown, but we will move forward. We are so angry.”

Yangon residents had woken up Monday to a heavier security presence, including police and military trucks on the roads and an embassy district barricaded.

Another protester expressed similar defiance to news agencies.

“The military unjustly took power from the elected civilian government,” said the 29-year-old, who asked not to be named.

“We will fight until we get our freedom, democracy, and justice.

Thousands also rallied in Naypyidaw, the capital and a military stronghold, with many on motorbikes. There were also large protests in the cities of Myitkyina and Dawei.

Many businesses in Yangon, and in other major cities, were closed on Monday following calls for a general strike to inject more momentum into the civil disobedience movement.

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This post was originally published on VOSA.

Myanmar,

Myanmar has closed its international airport in Yangon, its main gateway, the airport’s manager said on Tuesday, a day after the country’s army staged a coup.

Yangon airport manager Phone Myint told news agency the airport had closed until May but gave no exact date. The local newspaper reported permission to land and take off had been revoked for all flights, including relief flights, until 23:59 of May 31.

In a statement, military officials said the party that won the election would hand over power after a year of emergency. Earlier, the military arrested political leaders, including Prime minister Aung San Suu Kyi.

Earlier, a senior official from the party of Mynmar’s detained Aung Suu Kyi said that he had learned that her health was good and that she was not being moved from the location where she was being held after a coup against her government.

The whereabouts and condition of Myanmar’s elected leader have not been made public since she was detained in the capital Naypyidaw by the military during the coup on Monday.

“There is no plan to move Daw Aung San Su Kyi and Doctor Myo Aung. It’s learned that they are in good health,” said Kyi Toe, a member of the National League for Democracy’s central information committee in a social media post which also referred to one of her allies.

News agencies was unable to contact Kyi Toe for further comment and clarification as to how he obtained the information.

He also posted that NLD members of parliament detained during the coup were being allowed to leave the quarters where they had been held.

A day earlier, the army said it had carried out the detentions in response to “election fraud”, handing power to military chief Min Aung Hlaing and imposing a state of emergency for one year, according to a statement on a military-owned television station.

Phone lines to the capital Naypyitaw and the main commercial centre of Yangon were not reachable, and state TV went off air hours before parliament had been due to sit for the first time since the NLD’s landslide election win in November, viewed as a referendum on Suu Kyi’s fledgling democratic government.

Soldiers took up positions at city hall in Yangon and mobile internet data and phone services in the NLD stronghold were disrupted, residents said. Internet connectivity also had fallen dramatically, monitoring service NetBlocks said.

Suu Kyi, Myanmar President Win Myint and other NLD leaders had been “taken” in the early hours of the morning, NLD spokesman Myo Nyunt told news agency by phone.

“I want to tell our people not to respond rashly and I want them to act according to the law,” he said, adding that he expected to be arrested himself. News agency was subsequently unable to contact him.

The detentions came after days of escalating tension between the civilian government and the military that stirred fears of a coup in the aftermath of the election.

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PM Aung San Suu Kyi detains, Myanmar’s military stages coup.

This post was originally published on VOSA.

Myanmar,

Military staged a coup Monday, detaining democratically elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and declaring it had taken control of the country for one year under a state of emergency.

The intervention followed weeks of rising tensions between the military, which ruled the country for nearly five decades, and the civilian government over elections in November last year that Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party won easily.

Suu Kyi and President Win Myint were detained in the capital, Naypyidaw, before dawn, party spokesman Myo Nyunt told news agency, just hours before parliament was meant to reconvene for the first time since the elections.

“We heard they were taken by the military. With the situation we see happening now, we have to assume that the military is staging a coup,” he said.

The military then declared, via its own television channel, a one-year state of emergency and announced that former general Myint Swe would be acting president for the next year.

It justified the coup by alleging “huge irregularities” in the November polls that the election commission had failed to address.

“As the situation must be resolved according to the law, a state of emergency is declared,” the announcement said.

The military moved quickly to stifle dissent, severely restricting the internet and mobile phone communications across the country.

In Yangon, the former capital that remains Myanmar’s commercial hub, troops seized the city hall just ahead of the announcement, according to an news agency journalist.

Elsewhere, the chief minister of Karen state and several other regional ministers were also held, party sources told news agencies.

The United States, the United Nations and Australia quickly condemned the coup, calling for a restoration of democracy.

“The United States opposes any attempt to alter the outcome of recent elections or impede Myanmar’s democratic transition and will take action against those responsible if these steps are not reversed,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said in a statement.

Australia said the military was “once again seeking to seize control” of the country.

“We call on the military to respect the rule of law, to resolve disputes through lawful mechanisms and to release immediately all civilian leaders and others who have been detained unlawfully,” Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne said.

Myanmar’s polls in November were only the second democratic elections the country had seen since it emerged from the 49-year grip of military rule in 2011.

The NLD swept the polls and was expecting to renew the 75-year-old Suu Kyi’s lease on power with a new five-year term.

Suu Kyi is an immensely popular figure in Myanmar for her opposition to the military, having spent the best part of two decades under house arrest during the previous dictatorship. But the military has for weeks complained the polls were riddled with irregularities and claimed to have uncovered over 10 million instances of voter fraud.

It had demanded the government-run election commission release voter lists for cross-checking which the commission did not do.

Last week, military chief General Min Aung Hlaing arguably the country’s most powerful individual said Myanmar’s 2008 constitution could be “revoked” under certain circumstances.

Myanmar has seen two previous coups since independence from Britain in 1948, one in 1962 and one in 1988.

Suu Kyi’s previous opposition to the military earned her the Nobel peace prize. But her international image was shredded during her time in power as she defended the military-backed crackdown in 2017 against the country’s Muslim Rohingya community.

About 750,000 Rohingya were forced to flee into neighboring Bangladesh during the campaign, which UN investigators said amounted to genocide. Suu Kyi went to the United Nations to defend Myanmar against the allegations.

Suu Kyi was only ever de facto leader of Myanmar as the military had inserted a clause in the constitution that barred her from being president.

The 2008 constitution also ensured the military would remain a significant force in government by retaining control of the interior, border and defence ministries.

But to circumvent the clause preventing her from being president, Suu Kyi assumed leadership of the country via a new role of “state counsellor”. “From (the military’s) perspective, it has lost significant control over the political process,” political analyst Soe Myint Aung told to news agency.

This post was originally published on VOSA.