Military seized power in neighboring Myanmar detaining Aung San Suu Kyi on Monday when her party was to begin its second term in office.
Communications were suspended and flights disrupted as a military television network announced a one-year state of emergency with ultimate authority transferred to the army chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing.
The development followed weeks of wrangling between Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) and the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) that lost the November election in a landslide.
Myanmar endured almost 50 years of rule under oppressive military regimes till 2011 when the move towards democratic rule began.
Monday’s coup was widely criticised by the west with United Stated threatened “to take action against those responsible if these steps are not reversed,”
Neighbor China, however, said it hopes “all sides in Myanmar can manage their differences within the constitutional and legal framework and uphold stability.”
Bangladesh, which was waiting for a breakthrough in Rohingya repatriation under the political regime, called for peace and stability in Myanmar and said it hoped to continue the process of voluntary repatriation of Rohingya refugees with its neighbour.
“Bangladesh firmly adheres to and promotes democratic ethos. We hope that the democratic process and constitutional arrangements will be upheld in Myanmar. As an immediate and friendly neighbour, we would like to see peace and stability in Myanmar. We have been persistent in developing mutually beneficial relations with Myanmar and have been working with Myanmar for the voluntary, safe and sustained repatriation of the Rohingyas sheltered in Bangladesh. We expect these processes to continue in right earnest,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.
“It’s (military coup) a detestable act,” a former Ambassador of Bangladesh Munshi Faiz Ahmed told Bangladesh Post, adding that Bangladesh’s position is ‘logical’.
“But whoever in power in Myanmar, Bangladesh must work with them and deal with them since the Rohingya crisis still remained unresolved. They (Myanmar) are also our neighbor,” he said.
Why the coup?
Suu Kyi and her once-banned NLD led Myanmar after being elected in 2015 in the “freest and fairest” vote seen in 25 years. On Monday morning, the party should have begun its second term in office.
But behind the scenes, the military has kept a relatively tight grip on Myanmar as the constitution guarantees it a quarter of all seats in parliament and control of the country’s most powerful ministries - home affairs, defence and border affairs.
The November election saw the NLD win more than 80 percent of the vote, remaining hugely popular despite the allegations of ethnic cleansing against the country's Rohingya Muslims.
The military-backed opposition immediately began making accusations of fraud after the vote. The allegation was repeated in a signed statement released by the newly-instated acting president to justify the imposition of the year-long state of emergency, according to BBC.
“The UEC [election commission] failed to solve huge voter list irregularities in the multi-party general election which was held on 8 November 2020,” Myint Swe, a former general who had been vice-president, said.
But there has been little evidence to support the allegation. “Obviously Aung San Suu Kyi won a resounding election victory,” Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Asia, tells the BBC. “There have been allegations of electoral fraud. It is somewhat Trumpian - all these allegations of fraud with no evidence.”
Even so, Robertson describes the takeover as “inexplicable”. “Did [the vote] mean a loss of power? The answer is no.”
So, as long as the constitution remains the same, the military retains some control. But could the NLD, with its majority, have amended the constitution?
Unlikely, says BBC’s Jonathan Head, as that requires the support of 75 percent of the parliament - an almost impossible task when the military controls at least 25 percent.
Aye Min Thant, a former journalist and tech educator, suggests there may be another reason for Monday’s action: embarrassment on the part of the military.
“They weren't expecting to lose,” she told the BBC from Yangon. “People whose families were in the military must have voted against them.”
Of course, it is far more than that.
"You need to understand how the army views its position in the country," Aye Min Thant adds. "International media are quite used to referring to Aung San Suu Kyi as 'mother'. The army considers itself the 'father' of the nation."
As a result, it feels a sense of "obligation and entitlement" when it comes to ruling - and in recent years, as the country has become more open to international trade, it has not liked what it has seen.
"They view outsiders especially as a danger."
The pandemic and international concerns over the Rohingya being disenfranchised in the November vote may have emboldened the military to act now, Aye Min Thant suggests. All the same, it still took her by surprise.
Besides, Suu Kyi, others who were reported to have been detained by their family, friends and colleagues included President U Win Myint, cabinet ministers, the chief ministers of several regions, opposition politicians, writers and activists.
“The doors just opened to a different, almost certainly darker future,” said Thant Myint-U, a historian of Myanmar who has written several books about the country, told the New York Times. “Myanmar is a country already at war with itself, awash in weapons, with millions barely able to feed themselves, deeply divided along religious and ethnic lines.”
“That it was able to make any progress this past decade toward democracy was a near miracle,” he said. “I’m not sure anyone will be able to control what comes next.”
Don’t accept the coup
The NLD, in a statement in Aung San Suu Kyi’s name, called on Myanmar’s public not to accept the military coup.
“The actions of the military are actions to put the country back under a dictatorship,” the statement said. “I urge people not to accept this, to respond and wholeheartedly to protest against the coup by the military.”
Thant Myint-U, a prominent Myanmar historian and author, said in a tweet that the coup had opened doors to “a very different future”.
“I have a sinking feeling that noone will really be able to control what comes next,” he said. “And remember Myanmar’s a country awash in weapons, with deep divisions across ethnic and religious lines, where millions can barely feed themselves.”
Global condemnation
Tony Blinken, the US secretary of state, expressed the US’s “grave concern and alarm”. He called on Myanmar’s military leaders to release all civilian government officials, including the state counsellor, Suu Kyi, and to respect the will of the people as expressed in democratic elections on 8 November.
He said the US “stood with the people of Myanmar in their aspirations for freedom, democracy and development”.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, told a daily news briefing in Beijing that: “We have noted what has happened in Myanmar and are in the process of further understanding the situation.”
“China is a friendly neighbour 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.”
UN secretary general, António Guterres, condemned the coup as a serious blow to democratic reforms in the country.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted: “I condemn the coup and unlawful imprisonment of civilians, including Aung San Suu Kyi, in Myanmar”, and said the vote must be respected.
Rohingya crisis
Bangladesh is hosting over 1.1 million forcefully displaced Rohingyas in Cox’s Bazar district and most of them arrived there since August 25, 2017 after a military crackdown by Myanmar, which the UN called a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” by other rights groups.
In the last three years, Myanmar did not take back a single Rohingya while the attempts of repatriation failed twice due to trust deficit among the Rohingyas about their safety and security in the Rakhine state.
Both countries also discussed the issue in the tripartite forum with China.
The next round of tripartite director general (DG) level talks was scheduled to be held in the first week of February. It is not clear whether it is going to happen or not. A foreign official, however, declined to make any comment when asked.
Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Sunday said that they had received positive response from Myanmar towards starting the Rohingya repatriation.
“We got some positive responses. We told them it’s an opportunity for you (Myanmar) to take back your nationals,” he had said, referring to his recent correspondence with Myanmar international affairs minister Kyaw Tin.
The foreign minister said Myanmar has informed them about how many Rohingyas they would like to take back in the first batch of repatriation, likely to start soon.
“They (Myanmar) gave us a figure (of Rohingyas) to take back first,” he said, without disclosing the figure.
Bangladesh, earlier, handed over biometric data of 8,30,000 Rohingyas while the Myanmar authority so far verified only 42,000 displaced people out of the list.
