Myanmar’s Suu Kyi charged, detention location unknown

People clatter pans and tins to make noise to protest the coup in response to a social media campaign in Yangon on Tuesday. Pic/AFP

A Myanmar court has charged ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi with breaching an import and export law, a spokesperson from her National League for Democracy (NLD) said Wednesday.

The charge - that Suu Kyi was in possession of illegally imported walkie talkies - came to light two days after she was placed under house arrest and appeared to be an effort to lend a legal veneer to her detention.

The swift power seizure effectively returns a nation at the edge of democracy to direct military rule. Since Monday's putsch, party members have had no direct contact with Suu Kyi, though NLD press officer Kyi Toe said Tuesday a neighbour sighted her in her Naypyidaw residence, where she was believed to be held under house arrest.

In remand for 14 days
On Wednesday, Kyi Toe said the party received "reliable information" that "Dakhinathiri court has given a 14-day remand from February 1 to February 15 against Daw Aung San Suu Kyi under the charge of violating the import/export law." He added that president Win Myint was also under remand orders by the court, accused of breaching the National Disaster Management law.

On Tuesday night, scores of people in Myanmar's largest city of Yangon honked car horns and banged on pots and pans in the first known public resistance to the coup by the military. What was initially planned to take place for just a few minutes extended to more than a quarter-hour in several neighbourhoods of Yangon.

Military plans probe of last poll
Myanmar's new leader said the military government installed after Monday's coup plans an investigation into alleged fraud in last year's polls and will also prioritise the pandemic and the economy, a state newspaper reported on Wednesday. In the November 2020 election, Suu Kyi's party won 396 of the 476 seats contested in the lower and upper houses of Parliament.