Myanmar’s military has detained the country’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi in an apparent coup, her ruling party’s spokesman said Monday, the Times of Israel reports.
The military, which ruled the country for nearly five decades, had this week refused to rule out seizing power over its claims of voter fraud in November’s elections, won by Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party.
“With the situation we see happening now, we have to assume that the military is staging a coup.”
Communications appeared to be disrupted, with phone numbers in Naypyidaw seemingly unreachable.
The NLD swept the polls and was expecting to renew the 75-year-old leader’s lease on power with a new five-year term.
But the military has for weeks alleged the polls were riddled with irregularities, and claimed to have uncovered over 10 million instances of voter fraud.
It has demanded the government-run election commission release voter lists for cross-checking — which the commission has not done.
Min Aung Hlaing’s statements — released amid already increasing tensions over rumors of an imminent coup — raised alarm within Myanmar, as well as from more than a dozen foreign missions and the United Nations.
The last time Myanmar saw its constitution repealed was in 1962 and 1988 — when the military seized power and reinstated a junta government.
Suu Kyi — a former democracy icon whose image internationally has been in tatters over her handling of the Muslim Rohingya crisis — remains a deeply popular figure.
She spent 20 years off and on under house arrest for her role as an opposition leader, before she was released by the military in 2010.
