Myanmar: where is it and what is the country that suffered a coup like. where is Myanmar?

Myanmar was the scene on Monday, with armored vehicles in the streets and demonstrations by some supporters of the army, of a coup without a massive military presence that, however, put an end to the young democracy in the country in a few hours.

«It is extremely shocking, I do not want a military coup,» could be heard in the streets of Rangoon, the economic capital with more than five million inhabitants. Everything happened in a few hours. Shortly after 3:00 in the morning. Witnesses detected interruptions in telecommunications and Internet access.

Myanmar: the army detained Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, and appointed a general as interim president
According to a member of parliament allied with Aung San Suu Kyi (Nobel Peace Prize detained by the army), his family tried to leave to get information about what was happening. «The security forces said they went home, that the soldiers were in front of the building» where the parliamentarians live, the deputy said that he did not want to identify himself for fear of reprisals.

A few hours later, the military carried out a wave of arrests, including that of the head of the civilian government, Aung San Suu Kyi, and the president of the republic, Win Myint. The army blocked the approaches around Naypyidaw with armed troops and armored vehicles, while helicopters flew over the city. In Rangoon, soldiers from the Tatmadaw, the official name of the armed forces, seized the City Hall and blocked access to the international airport.

The military then declared a state of emergency on its Myawaddy TV channel for a year and appointed its generals to key positions, abruptly ending ten years of democratic transition.

Now, Min Aung Hlaing, the almighty head of the army, concentrates the «legislative, administrative and judicial» powers, while another general, Myint Swe, was appointed interim president, a mainly honorary position.

The reason used by the military to justify the coup, the third since the country’s independence in 1948, is the «enormous» electoral fraud, according to them, in the November parliamentary elections, which was widely won by the National League for Democracy, in power since the 2015 parliamentary elections.

To resist
Sensing the coup, Aung San Suu Ky i, who spent 15 years under house arrest in her country, left a message to the population before being arrested in which she urged them to «not accept» the military takeover.

Coup in Myanmar: why did the military seize power?
«I was hoping for a better future,» said a 64-year-old man queuing to buy food as the country is being hit hard by the coronavirus pandemic, with more than 140,000 cases and 3,000 deaths. But not everyone is distressed, and several trucks were seen speeding by on the streets of Rangoon with army supporters, waving flags and singing nationalist anthems.

The military promised to hold new «free and fair» elections once the state of emergency is lifted, which should last for a year. But some citizens remain pessimistic. «I’m afraid it will last longer,» said 35-year-old director Lamin Oo. «At the moment, everything is calm in my neighborhood of Rangoon, but we have to prepare for the worst.» In 1988, some 3,000 civilians were killed by the military in a bloody crackdown on anti-government demonstrations.

How did the crisis start?
Myanmar, which is located in Southeast Asia and borders India, Bangladesh, Thailand, Laos and China, has suffered from a climate of instability for weeks. The army maintains that there were irregularities in the general elections last November, the second since the end of the military dictatorship in 2011. They were won by an overwhelming majority by the National League for Democracy (LND), which was already in power.

The NLD won 83% of the 476 seats in parliament, but the army claimed that it discovered «10 million cases of electoral fraud» and requested an electoral commission to publish the electoral lists to verify them, which it did not do.

At a press conference on Tuesday, the army spokesman did not rule out that the military would take control of the country.

And now that?
The army declared a state of emergency for one year, with generals in top positions. Myint Swe, who led the powerful Rangoon military command and current vice president of Burma, becomes interim president for one year, a primarily honorary position.

Control «legislative, administrative and judicial» rests with Min Aung Hlaing, who now concentrates almost all powers. This coup, condemned by the international community, is not the first: since its independence in 1948, Burma has been ruled by military regimes for almost 50 years.

There have already been two coups d’état, in 1962 and 1988. How will the population react? Aung San Suu Kyi, widely criticized internationally for her handling of the crisis of the Rohingya Muslims (hundreds of thousands of them fled army violence in 2017 and took refuge in neighboring Bangladesh), is still revered by a majority of Burmese.