Myanmar military junta dissolves Suu Kyi’s party

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The state media in the Southeast Asian country reported this on Tuesday, citing the election commission. The National League for Democracy, which won landslide victories over military-backed parties in the 2015 and 2020 elections, will be “automatically delisted as a political party” from Wednesday, according to broadcaster MRTV.

Party not notified in time

According to state media, the party had not been re-registered, as required by the new law introduced by the military junta. In January, the junta gave political parties two months to re-register.

Myanmar is due to hold elections this year for the first time since the February 2021 coup. Opponents of the junta say the elections are neither free nor fair. Last month, however, the junta announced a six-month extension of the state of emergency in the country and postponed the originally scheduled elections to August. The junta justified the delay by not controlling enough parts of the country to hold a vote.

Situation in Myanmar remains unstable

The situation in the country has been unstable since the army overthrew the government of Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021, who was elected by a large majority in 2020. The junta suppressed protests against the coup, sometimes with violence.

More than 3,100 people were killed and more than 17,000 arrested, according to human rights groups. Since then, resistance fighters and ethnic groups against the coup have regularly fought with soldiers in different regions of the country. As a result, according to the UN, more than a million people have been displaced.

UN Human Rights Commissioner Volker Türk described the situation in Myanmar two years after the coup as a “slumbering catastrophe”. The military goes “completely with impunity” against its opponents.

(AFP)

Source: Blick