Myanmar Lawmakers Say They’re Under House Arrest After Coup

Hundreds of members of Myanmar’s Parliament remained confined inside their government housing in the country’s capital 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, meanwhile, released a statement calling for the military to honor the results of last November’s election and release all of those detained.

“The commander-in-chief seizing the power of the nation is against the constitution and it also neglects the sovereign power of people,” the party said in a statement on one of its social media pages.

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.

The lawmaker said police were inside the complex and soldiers were outside it. He said 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 okay.

“We had to stay awake and be alert,” the lawmaker told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity out of concern for his safety.

The takeover came the morning lawmakers from all of the country had gathered in the capital for the opening of the new parliamentary session and followed days of worry that a coup was coming. The military said the seizure was necessary because the government had not acted on the military’s claims of fraud in November’s elections — in which Suu Kyi’s ruling party won a majority of the parliamentary seats up for grabs — and because it allowed the election to go ahead despite the coronavirus pandemic.

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.

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.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the developments a “serious blow to democratic reforms,” according to his spokesman. The Security Council will hold an emergency meeting on the military’s actions — probably on Tuesday, according to Britain, which currently holds the council presidency.

In the late afternoon, the information ministry posted a message from the military with a warning  to the public who they say are “spreading rumours on social media to provoke riots and instability.”