Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the civilian leader of Myanmar who was deposed by the military in a coup d’état, was charged on Wednesday with an obscure violation: he illegally imported at least 10 walkie-talkies, according to an official from her National League for Democracy Party. The offense can be punished with up to three years in prison.
It was a bizarre epilogue to 48 Hours in which the army put the country’s most popular leader back under house arrest and erased hopes that the Southeast Asian nation might one day serve as a beacon of democracy in a world of increasing authoritarianism.
The surprising use of walkie-talkies to justify imprisoning a Nobel Peace Prize laureate fueled the military’s penchant for using a fine-grained strategy to neutralize its greatest political rival. The country’s ousted president is also jailed for alleged violations of coronavirus restrictions.
The court order to detain Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, issued by officials from the party that ruled Myanmar until Monday’s coup, was dated the day of the coup and authorized her detention for 15 days. The document states that soldiers ransacking their mansion in Naypyidaw, the capital, uncovered various communication devices that had been brought into the country without proper paperwork.
The coup replaced an elected government that was viewed by voters as the final defense against a military that had ruled the country for nearly five decades. During its five-year tenure, the National League for Democracy received two sweeping mandates, most recently in the general election last November.
As the coup progressed before dawn, the military resorted to the dictatorship’s well-known game book: shutdown of the Internet service, suspension of flights and imprisonment of its critics. Along with Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, her most loyal ministers, Buddhist monks, writers, activists and filmmakers were also rounded up.
Yet few soldiers patrolled the streets in the stunned silence that followed the takeover of the military. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was back at her mansion in Naypyidaw on Monday evening instead of languishing in one of the country’s notorious prison cells. There were no further mass arrests and the internet came back online.
Relative peace – this seemed to be a largely bloodless coup so far – prompted some people in Myanmar to cautiously raise their voices against the reintroduction of military rule. While some people removed the National League for Democracy flags from outside their homes, others took part in small-scale campaigns against civil disobedience, beating pots and pans, or honking their car horns to protest the coup.
Dozens of workers on a cellular network quit to object to their employer’s military connections. The doctors at a hospital posed together with three fingers each, which were raised in a defiant greeting from the films “Hunger Games”. The gesture has become a symbol of the pro-democracy demonstrations in neighboring Thailand, where coup rumors have surfaced.
The charges against Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who had been under house arrest for a total of 15 years before the generals released her in 2010, echoed previous allegations of esoteric legal crimes. In one case, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s prison was extended because an American swam to her lakeside villa unannounced and she violated the terms of her detention.
But when such crimes seem absurd, they have real consequences. The military had made a habit of getting rid of political rivals and critics by charging them with arcane crimes.
Along with Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, President U Win Myint, one of her political acolytes, who was also arrested on Monday, was issued a warrant for violating emergency coronavirus regulations. According to U Kyi Toe, the National League for Democracy official, he was accused of greeting a car full of supporters during the campaign season last year.
If Mr. Win Myint is found guilty, he faces three years in prison. Keeping a criminal record could prevent him from returning to the presidency.
On Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council, which had convened a private emergency meeting in Myanmar, declined to issue a statement condemning the coup. China and Russia rejected such a step.
In Washington, the State Department said the takeover of the military was indeed a coup, a label that will affect US foreign aid to the country.
Myanmar’s military, known as the Tatmadaw, staged its first coup in 1962, a bloody exercise that paved the way for nearly five decades of direct iron-fisted rule. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and the leaders of her National League for Democracy were imprisoned during their political heyday.
The generals ordered the massacres of pro-democracy protesters and dispatched soldiers to remove ethnic minorities from their country. Even when the junta began giving space to a civil administration to operate, it made sure that the army would still control much of the economic and political sphere.
The confirmation of the charges against Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her peaceful resistance to the army, ended in a whirlwind of rumors on Wednesday. In the early afternoon, lawmakers of the National League for Democracy exchanged misinformation even when they were in military custody themselves.
One rumor said she would be charged with high treason, a crime that can be punished with death. Another repetition said she was accused of electoral fraud. Nobody suspected that their alleged sin would involve walkie-talkies.
In a statement released Tuesday by the army chief’s office, Maj. Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the Tatmadaw said he was acting in the best interests of the citizens of Myanmar.
“For successive periods, the Myanmar Tatmadaw has kept the ‘people are the parents’ motto’ in relation to the people,” the statement said before insisting that the mass fraud in last November elections forced them to take the stage had a coup.
The National League for Democracy, which oversaw the nation’s electoral commission, denied the Tatmadaw’s allegations that voter manipulation had led to the poor demeanor of the military’s proxy party.
On Wednesday, the National League for Democracy lawmakers, who had been confined to their homes by soldiers, issued a statement saying they continue to support Mr. Win Myint as president. They rejected proposals that they had been released from their legislative obligations. The National Assembly was due to meet on the day of the coup for the first time since the November elections.
“Stop intervention,” lawmakers warned the Tatmadaw. There seemed to be a warning two days late.
