Myanmar’s military on Monday detained the country’s de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, declared a state of emergency, and took control of the government until a new election next year.
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy called for her immediate release. Reuters reported that her whereabouts since the siege is unknown. The U.N. Security Council planned to meet on Tuesday to consider a global response.
The U.S. came out in opposition to the coup, and President Biden threatened to impose new sanctions against the country’s military leaders. Biden called the takeover a “direct assault on the country’s transition to democracy and the rule of law.”
Greg Poling and Simon Hudes, two members of Washington’s Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Al Jazeera that the sanction threat will likely do little to deter the military leaders because they do so little business with the U.S. Singapore was the largest foreign investor in the country in 2020.
Vriens & Partners, a government affairs consultancy firm, told the BBC that it is likely Myanmar will turn to China if the U.S. disengages and puts new sanctions in place.
“It’s really the only country they can turn to,” he said.
“China is a friendly neighbor of Myanmar’s. We hope that all sides in Myanmar can appropriately handle their differences under the constitution and legal framework and safeguard political and social stability,” Wang Wenbin, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said, according to the report.
Suu Kyi’s party called on the country of 54.05 million to “protest against the coup.” The report said her party easily won the election in November, but the military has not accepted the results.
TRENDPOST: While the media plays it up as a military coup in Myanmar, as we have been reporting in Gerald Celente’s Trends in The News broadcasts, while Ms. Suu Kyi won historic elections in 2015, and again last year by a landslide, she was seen as just a different face fronting for the military junta who have continually run the country.
And as with other Noble Peace Prize winners – such as Barack “I’m Really Good At Killing People” Obama (quoted in the book “Double Down”) for his murderous drone strikes and endless wars, the current Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, who launched the Tigray war – Ms. Suu Kyi was also awarded the prize… before her supporting of the general’s murderous war against the Rohingya Muslims minority.
