Bleak future ahead for Suu Kyi and Myanmar

ARAB NEWS
DR. AZEEM IBRAHIM
February 19, 2021

Aung San Suu Kyi attends a special lunch on sustainable development on the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Bangkok, Thailand, Nov. 4, 2019. (Reuters)

Aung San Suu Kyi once again finds herself in a set of circumstances that defined her life in the past: Under arrest by the military government of her country. However, this time around, things are very different. She is no longer seen as the global democracy and human rights icon, and few outside of Myanmar will campaign for her release with the energy and zeal they did in the past. And, while she remains popular in Myanmar itself, that popularity remains unlikely to translate into a reversal of the military coup.

Trial for Aung San Suu Kyi Begins in Secret

The New York Times

Hannah Beech
Feb. 16, 2021

Myanmar’s ousted civilian leader appeared in court via video conference without her lawyer’s
knowledge. She faces an additional charge that had not been previously made public.

Protesters in Yangon, Myanmar, on Tuesday called for the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the ousted civilian leader. In Naypidaw, the capital, her trial began in secret.Credit...The New York Times

The closed-door trial began in secret, with the two defendants appearing by video. The defense attorney wasn’t even aware what was happening. By the time he rushed to the court on Tuesday afternoon, it was all over, in less than an hour.

The trial of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s civilian leader who was ousted in a military coup two weeks ago, and U Win Myint, the deposed president, began on Tuesday. They face obscure charges that could land them in prison for six years and three years respectively.

US has been unable to contact Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar coup aftermath, it says

South China Morning Post
Robert Delaney
3 Feb, 2021

• State Department is working with Japan, India and ‘other countries [that] have better contact with Burmese military than we do’
• US humanitarian assistance for Rohingya Muslims, many of whom have fled Myanmar to escape violence, will continue 

A supporter holds a photo of Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi during a protest against the military coup on Tuesday. Photo: EPA-EFE

The US government said on Tuesday that it has not been able to contact leading members of Myanmar’s civilian government, including de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and is working with Japan and India to put pressure on the country’s military for deposing the leaders in a “coup d’etat”.

“Our understanding is that most of the senior officials are under house arrest, and the [National League for Democracy] leadership as well as some of the regional government figures and civil society figures, but we’ve not been able to reach them,” a State Department official told reporters.

Myanmar coup: Aung San Suu Kyi detained as military seizes control

B B C

02 February 2021

Myanmar's military has seized power after detaining Aung San Suu Kyi and other democratically elected leaders.

Troops are patrolling the streets and a night-time curfew is in force, with a one-year state of emergency declared.

US President Joe Biden raised the threat of new sanctions, with the UN and UK also condemning the coup.

The army alleges the recent landslide election win by Ms Suu Kyi's party was marred by fraud. She urged supporters to "protest against the coup".

Schumer said administration has briefed Congress on Burmese coup

THE HILL   

Laura Kelly
02/01/21 

© Getty Images

The Biden administration has briefed Congress on the military coup in Myanmar, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Monday, amid an international outcry condemning Burmese forces over their arrest of democratically elected leaders.

Speaking from the Senate floor, Schumer said Congress stands ready to work with the administration on efforts to support restoring democracy in the Southeast Asian country, also referred to as Burma.

“We are monitoring this situation with great concern, and the Biden administration is already providing briefings to the Hill on the state of affairs,” he said. “Congress stands ready to work collaboratively with the administration to resolve the situation.”

The Significance Of Aung San Suu Kyi's Detainment By Myanmar Military

npr

February 1, 2021

NPR's Ailsa Chang talks with Laurel Miller, director of the Asia Program at the International Crisis Group, about Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, and her detainment by the Myanmar military.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Myanmar's military staged a coup today and detained the country's de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. It is the latest turbulent turn in that country and a return to detention for Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. She was put under house arrest after the military refused to accept the results of the previous year's election that saw her party win an outright majority. She later became the country's de facto leader after the military decided to loosen its grip on power in 2011. And while she remains popular within the country, internationally, her reputation has suffered. Joining us now for more is Laurel Miller, director of the Asia Program for the International Crisis Group.

Myanmar coup: Army takes control after detaining Aung San Suu Kyi and other key government figures

Aljazeera

1st Feburary2021

Myanmar’s military has seized power and declared a state of emergency for one year following days of escalating tension over the result of November’s parliamentary elections.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s de facto leader, President Win Myint and other senior members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party have been detained in the capital, Naypyidaw, on Monday.
Al Jazeera interviews Tun Khin, President of Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK.

Link : Here

Amid Fragile Ceasefire, Frustration Over Missed Election in Myanmar’s Rakhine State

Radio Free Asia ( RFA ) 

2020-12-31 

People wearing face shields and face masks to prevent the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus queue to vote at a polling station in Rakhine state, Nov. 8, 2020.

 

Rakhine’s ethnic army and politicians blamed Myanmar’s ruling party and electoral authorities Thursday for the failure to hold elections in the war-torn state, as analysts warned that holding a vote will be critical to keeping a fragile ceasefire going into 2021.

After a violent 2020 in Myanmar’s westernmost state, Rakhine residents were largely left out of voting in Nov. 8 general elections, with only a quarter of the state’s registered voters able to go to polls after authorities scrapped the election, citing security concerns.

AA နှင့်တပ်မတော်၊ တပ်မတော်နှင့် NLD ရိုဟင်ဂျာတို့အရေး

ရန်ကုန်ခေတ်သစ်
24 December 2020

 

 မြန်မာပြည်မှာ မျက်စိမှိတ်ပြီးတော့ အမှောင်ထဲမှာ ဗေဒင်ဟောရသလိုပဲ။ တပ်က AAနဲ့ တွေ့နေပြီ မူဆလင် ရိုဟင်ဂျာဆိုတဲ့ စကားလုံးကို စကားလုံးကို စသုံးတယ်။ ဆိုတော့ တပ်ကဘယ်လိုသွားမလဲ။ NLD အစိုးရက ဘယ် လိုသွားမလဲ။ ဗန်းစကားနဲ့ပြောမယ်ဆိုရင် ရွှီးနေတာလား"

အပြည်ပြည်ဆိုင်ရာ တရားရုံးICJ က ၎င်းတို့ချမှတ်ထားသော ကြားဖြတ်အမိန့်များကို အကောင် အထည်ဖော် ခြင်းရှိ၊ မရှိစောင့်ကြည့်စိစစ်မည့် ကော်မတီတစ်ရပ် (ad Hoc committee) ကို ဖွဲ့စည်းလိုက်ကြောင်း ICJ က ဒီဇင်ဘာလ ၂၁ ရက်နေ့က သတင်းထုတ်ပြန်သည်။

ဟီလာရီ ပြောသည့် ဒေါ်အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည် (HARD CHOICE) (နိဂုံး)

ယောနသံ
Hla Soewai
Dec 01 2020

၂၀၁၂ နိုဝင်ဘာလထဲတွင် သမ္မတ အိုဘားမား သည် မြန်မာပြည်ရှိ ‘တိုးတက်မှု အလင်းတန်း” လေးအား ကိုယ် တိုင်ကိုယ်ကျ သွားရောက်ကြည့်ရှုရန် ဆုံးဖြတ်လိုက်သည်။ သမ္မတ အဖြစ် ပြန်လည် အရွေးချယ် ခံရ ပြီးနောက် သူ၏ပထမဆုံး ပြည်ပ ခရီးစဉ် ဖြစ်သည်။ခရီးအတူတူ သွားဖြစ်ခဲ့သည့် နောက်ဆုံးခရီးစဉ်လည်း ဖြစ်ပေလိမ့်မည်။

ထိုင်းဘုရင်နှင့် အတူ သူ၏ ဘန်ကောက် ဆေးရုံသို့ အတူတူ သွားရောက်ကြည့်ရှုခဲ့ပြီးနောက် ကမ္ဘောဒီယား တွင် ကျင်းပမည့် အရှေ့အာရှ ထိပ်သီး ဆွေးနွေးပွဲ မတိုင်မီ ခြောက်နာရီ ခရီးစဉ်အဖြစ် မြန်မာ သို့ ထွက်ခွာ လာခဲ့ကြ သည်။ သမ္မတသည် သိန်းစိန်နှင့်ကော အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်နှင့်ပါ တွေ့ဆုံရန် ရှိပြီးရန်ကုန်တက္ကသိုလ်တွင်ကျောင်း သားများကို မိန့်ခွန်းပြောရန်လည်း စီစဉ်ထားသည်။

Suu Kyi's Myanmar election win fails to excite foreign investors

NIKKEI ASIA
YUICHI NITTA,
Nikkei staff writer
November 24, 2020

Aung San Suu Kyi's fervid supporters show a clear contrast from the cool attitude of western media and human rights organizations. (Nikkei montage/Source photo by Reuters) 

 

Overseas companies put off by red tape, poor infrastructure and plight of Rohingya

YANGON -- Aung San Suu Kyi's landslide Myanmar election win this month triggered a frenzy of excitement among her supporters, but it was met with cool shrugs by many foreign governments and investors seeking economic and political reform.

On the polling day of Nov. 8, voters lined up from early morning to cast their ballots support for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. And for three nights, dozens of people stood outside the NLD's headquarters in Yangon chanting her name as incoming results pointed to a huge victory for the party.

Myanmar Still Loves Aung San Suu Kyi, but Not for the Reasons You Think

The New York Times 

 By Min Zin
Mr. Min Zin is a political scientist.
Nov. 23, 2020

 

Credit...Ye Aung Thu/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

YANGON, Myanmar — The National League for Democracy, the incumbent party led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, secured another landslide victory in the general elections of Nov. 8. It did better even than in 2015, a landmark election, winning this year 396 of the 476 elected seats to be filled in both the lower and the upper houses. (Another 166 seats were reserved for military appointees.)

And the N.L.D. obtained this result despite the government’s weak performance on its key pledges during its first term in office — constitutional reform, national reconciliation and peace, socioeconomic improvement — and the rise of both ethnic minority parties and new challengers. In addition to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s party and the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (U.S.D.P.), some 90 parties fielded candidates this year.

So what does the outcome say about what Myanmar’s voters really care about?

Suu Kyi's capabilities tested amid numerous issues plaguing Myanmar: Yomiuri Shimbun

THE STRAITS TIMES

Editorial Notes
Nov 23, 2020

The paper says there has been little progress on ending the civil war between the military and ethnic minorities, issues that Aung San Suu Kyi included in her campaign pledges.

Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi delivering a speech on State Television in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, Nov 9, 2020. PHOTO: EPA-EFE

TOKYO (THE YOMIURI SHIMBUN/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - Efforts to weaken the military's involvement in politics are essential if Myanmar is to promote democratisation and achieve domestic stability. Aung San Suu Kyi's ability to take action is being called into question.

In the Myanmar general election, the ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), led by State Counsellor Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of the government, won more than 80 per cent of the seats up for grabs, maintaining its sole majority. Suu Kyi's popularity has been demonstrated, but the future will be difficult.

The NLD won a landslide in the previous election in 2015, marking a shift from the military-centred political rule that lasted more than half a century. 

UK PM raises Rohingya concerns in call with Myanmar leader

REUTERS
Fri, 20 November 2020, 

 

FILE PHOTO: British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson is welcomed by Myanmar's leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Naypyidaw,

 

LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson raised the UK's ongoing concerns over the Rohingya crisis and the conflict in Rakhine when he spoke by phone to Myanmar's State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi on Friday, his office said in a statement.

(Reporting by Alistair Smout, writing by Sarah Young; editing by Stephen Addison) 

Link : Here

The Rohingya crisis and Myanmar's dark road to democracy

TheNewArab

Aung San Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), is set to form a civilian government for the second time in a row following the end of Myanmar's 50-year military rule.

The NLD won by a huge margin of 396 parliamentary seats in the 8 November election against the military-aligned main opposition party the Union Solidarity of Development Party (USDP), securing a second five-year term.

In-depth: Excluded from voting and long denied citizenship, Rohingya Muslims face a precarious future in post-election Myanmar. 

Editorial: Time for Aung San Suu Kyi to start acting like the Nobel winner she is

Los Angeles Times

Opinion 
The Times Editorial Board
Nov. 11, 2020

 

Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi in 2017.

(Aung Shine Oo / Associated Press)

 

While much of the world has been fixated on the electoral drama in the U.S., another fraught election took place this past weekend in a country racked by violence and human rights abuses.

For only the second time since it transitioned from a military dictatorship into a fledgling democracy in 2015, voters in the South Asian country of Myanmar went to the polls to elect members of its parliament. The ruling National League of Democracy, the party of Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Sui Kyi, has reportedly won in a bigger landslide than it did five years ago. Just as in the U.S., masses of voters turned out, enduring long lines despite a surge of coronavirus cases.

Myanmar Election Delivers Another Decisive Win for Aung San Suu Kyi

The New York Times 

By Hannah Beech and Saw Nang

Nov. 11, 2020

The civilian leader’s reputation overseas has been stained by her defense of a military accused of genocide. But in voting on Sunday, her party easily secured a parliamentary majority.

Supporters of the National League for Democracy in Yangon, Myanmar, on Monday with portraits of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, whom many in the country still regard as a bulwark against military rule.Credit...Ye Aung Thu/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

The political party led by Myanmar’s civilian leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, is poised to stay in power after winning what is only the second truly contested election the country has held in decades, though one in which many voters from ethnic minority groups were prevented from casting their ballots.

What will Aung San Suu Kyi's ruling party’s win mean for the Rohingya people?

TRT WORLD
Nov 11, 2020

Human Rights activist and president of the Burmese Rohingya Organisation Tun Khin discusses Myanmar’s ruling party, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, claiming victory in Monday’s general election and what it means for the Rohingya people.

Link: Here

Suu Kyi's party says it won landslide victory in Myanmar polls

FRANCH 24  

Yangon (AFP)

09/11/2020

A car carrying supporters of the National League for Democracy wave flags in front of the party's office in Mandalay Ye Naing Ye AFP

 

Aung San Suu Kyi's ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) said Monday it was confident of winning a landslide victory in Myanmar as official results trickled in following the weekend's coronavirus-disrupted election.

Millions lined up for hours to cast their ballots on Sunday -- only the second national election since the country emerged from outright military rule in 2011.

Aung San Suu Kyi in line for second term as Myanmar votes counted

Aljazeera
9 Nov 2020

Early election results are expected on Monday as voters thronged polling stations despite pandemic.

The elections commission expects to announce early official results on Monday [Shwe Paw Mya Tin/Reuters] 

Aung San Suu Kyi is expected to win a second term in office when authorities in Myanmar release early election results on Monday.

Sunday’s general election was seen as a referendum on the government led by Suu Kyi’s ruling National League for Democracy (NLD), which remains popular at home but has seen its reputation collapse overseas amid allegations of genocide against the country’s mostly Muslim Rohingya minority.