Myanmar military coup: Myanmar's military detained de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Monday. Hours after the arrest, the military confirmed that a state of emergency had been declared for one year in the country. President Win Myint and other political leaders were also arrested in the capital city of Naypyidaw, in the early hours of Monday.
"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," Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party spokesman Myo Nyunt told AFP. The military has yet to release a statement.
The intervention is a result of tensions between the civilian government and Myanmar's military, following a disputed election. The Southeast Asian nation, formerly known as Burma, was ruled by the military until democratic reforms began in 2011.
In November last year, Nobel Laureate Suu Kyi’s democratic party won the 2020 Myanmar election, securing enough seats to secure a second term.
Who is Aung San Suu Kyi?
Suu Kyi, a former democracy icon and Nobel peace prize winner, is the daughter of Myanmar's independence hero, General Aung San. Her father was assassinated when she was only two years old, just before the country gained independence from British colonial rule in 1948.
Suu Kyi, popularly called as "the Lady", remains an internationally popular figure who was once hailed as a human rights activist who gave up her freedom to challenge the military rule in Myanmar.
In 1991, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, while still under house arrest, and hailed as "an outstanding example of the power of the powerless". She spent nearly 15 years in detention between 1989 and 2010. In 2015 she led the NLD to a landslide victory in Myanmar's first openly contested election in 25 years. In 2017, Suu Kyi invited criticism over the handling of the Rohingya crisis. More than 740,000 Rohingyas, had to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh to escape the state’s violence.
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