The United Nations voiced concern over the wellbeing of some 600,000 Rohingya Muslims still in the country following the military coup in Myanmar, while the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) is due to hold a meeting on Tuesday over the latest developments.
In 2017, a military crackdown in Myanmar’s Rakhine State sent more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims fleeing into Bangladesh, where they are still stranded in refugee camps. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and Western states accused the Myanmar military of ethnic cleansing, which it denied.
The 15-member UNSC will hold an emergency meeting on the military’s actions – probably on Tuesday, according to Britain, which currently holds the council presidency.
“We want to address the long-term threats to peace and security, of course working closely with Myanmar’s Asia and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) neighbors,” Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Barbara Woodward, president of the council for February, told reporters.
China, backed by Russia, shielded Myanmar from any significant council action after the 2017 military crackdown. China and Russia are council veto powers along with France, Britain and the United States. China’s U.N. mission told Reuters on Monday it hoped to find out more about the latest developments in Myanmar from the UNSC briefing on Tuesday.
“It’s also our hope that any move of the council would be conducive to the stability of Myanmar rather than making the situation more complicated,” a spokesperson for the Chinese U.N. mission said.
Speaking in Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said the government was in touch with “all sides” about the meeting and the international community’s actions should contribute to “a peaceful resolution.”
Meanwhile, hundreds of members of Myanmar’s Parliament remained confined inside their government housing in the country’s capital Naypyidaw on Tuesday, a day after the military staged a coup and detained senior politicians, including Nobel laureate and de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party (NLD) released a statement calling for the military to honor the results of last November’s election and release all of those detained.
The coup is a dramatic backslide for Myanmar, which was emerging from decades of strict military rule and international isolation that began in 1962. It now presents a test for the international community, which had ostracized Myanmar while it was under military rule and then enthusiastically embraced Suu Kyi’s government as a sign the country was finally on the path to democracy. U.S. President Joe Biden threatened new sanctions, which the country had previously faced.
On Tuesday in Yangon, the country’s biggest city, the streets were quieter than usual but markets were open, street vendors were still cooking food, and taxis and buses were still running. There were no outward signs of heavy security but the unease that set in after Monday’s events still lingered. People were removing the once-ubiquitous red flags of Suu Kyi’s party from their homes and businesses.
The English-language Myanmar Times headlined the state of emergency, while other state-owned newspapers showed front page photographs of Monday’s National Defense and Security Council meeting, which the newly appointed acting President Myint Swe and Min Aung Hlaing attended with other military officials.
One of the detained lawmakers said he and about 400 other parliament members were able to speak with one another inside the compound and communicate with their constituencies by phone but were not allowed to leave the housing complex in Naypyitaw. He said Suu Kyi was not being held with them, according to International press.
The lawmaker said police were inside the complex and soldiers were outside it. He added the politicians, comprised of members of Suu Kyi’s party and various smaller parties, spent a sleepless night worried that they might be taken away but were otherwise OK. The NLD’s press officer Kyi Toe told Agency France-Presse (AFP) that “according to her (Suu Kyi) neighbor we contacted, she walks sometimes in her compound to let others know she’s in good health.”
“We had to stay awake and be alert,” the lawmaker told The Associated Press (AP) on condition of anonymity out of concern for his safety.
The coup was met with international condemnation and many countries called for the release of the detained leaders. Biden called the military’s actions “a direct assault on the country’s transition to democracy and the rule of law” and said Washington would not hesitate to restore sanctions.
“The United States will stand up for democracy wherever it is under attack,” he said in a statement, while Guterres called the developments a “serious blow to democratic reforms,” according to his spokesperson.
The United Nations has long had a presence in Myanmar. Security Council envoys traveled there in April 2018 and met separately with Suu Kyi and Min Aung Hlaing following the crackdown on the Rohingya.