What is happening in Myanmar?
A developing country with a population of 54 million people in SouthEast Asia has been facing a political crisis for the past six months — this is Myanmar. On the first of February, Myanmar's military Tatmadaw had detained the leader Aung San Suu Kyi and members of the National League for Democracy (NLD). The elections held in November 2020 were optimistic for the locals due to the NLD winning the elections by 396 seats out of 476. However, the Tatmadaw (military) believed the votes were fabricated and wanted a rerun of the elections but were rejected by the Union election commission. This caused a conflict between both the parties and resulted in the coup called a State of emergency by the general Min Aung Hlaing of Tatmadaw. As all these changes were taking place, the citizens started to protest on the cities' main streets, which led to wifi and mobile services being cut off alongside censored media for the world to see. Moreover, the protests rapidly got more severe, which preceded the military to kill thousands of innocent people. As if this was not enough, around 23,000 criminals were released; schools, hospitals and many other public places were closed due to these horrifying circumstances.
History of Myanmar's military coup:
Myanmar gained independence from the British in 1948. However, in 1962 a military coup occurred, which led to the country being under the influence of dictatorship resulting in the country's economic growth decreasing. In 1980 Aung San Suu Kyi created the democratic party NLD; hence protests started to take place. In 1988 student-led protests for democracy caused over 3,000 people to die, known as the ‘8888 uprising'. Although the military accepted democratic elections by 2011, Myanmar earned independence in 2015 when Aung San Suu Kyi's party NLD won the elections.