YANGON (HRNW) – The Myanmar military’s seizure of power on Monday follows weeks of tensions with civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her government.
Suu Kyi and other top civilian leaders were taken into custody by soldiers on the same day as the first new parliamentary session was due to be held since a national election last November.
Suu Kyi remains an immensely popular figure in Myanmar despite her international reputation being deeply tarnished over a crackdown on the country’s stateless Rohingya minority in 2017.
Her National League for Democracy (NLD) party swept last year’s poll in a landslide, winning by an even greater margin than the 2015 vote that brought the former Nobel laureate to power.
But the country’s military, which has ruled the country for most of the last 60 years, says the vote was plagued by irregularities.
It claims to have uncovered more than 10 million instances of voter fraud and has demanded the government-run election commission release voter lists for cross-checking.
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