Myanmar: Top Suu Kyi aide held as hundreds protest against coup
YANGON: A key aide to ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested on Friday, days after a coup that has sparked outrage and calls by US President Joe Biden for the generals to relinquish power.
The arrest came after the streets of Myanmar’s biggest city filled for a third night with people banging pots and honking car horns, voicing their opposition to Monday’s coup.
On Friday, hundreds of teachers at Yangon’s Dagon University staged a rally where displayed a three-finger salute borrowed from Hong Kong and Thailand’s democracy movements, and sang a popular revolution song.
“We will never be together with them,” lecturer Dr Nwe Thazin said of the military at a protest at the Yangon University of Education. “We want that kind of government to collapse as
soon as possible.”
The military detained de facto leader Suu Kyi and President Win Myint on Monday, ending the country’s 10-year dalliance with democracy that had followed decades of oppressive junta rule. Suu Kyi is in good health under house arrest, her
National League for Democracy press officer said on Friday.
“We have learnt that State Counsellor Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is in good health (in Naypyidaw),” press officer Kyi Toe said on his official Facebook page.
“As far as I know, she’s under house arrest,” he told AFP.
Win Htein, considered Suu Kyi’s right-hand man, was arrested at his daughter’s house, said Kyi Toe, a press officer for the National League of Democracy.
The 79-year-old NLD stalwart has spent long stretches in and out for detention for campaigning against military rule.
Ahead of his arrest, Win Htein told local media that the military putsch was “not wise”, and that its leaders had taken the country “in the wrong direction”.
“Everyone in the country should oppose as much as they can the actions they are seeking to take us back to zero by destroying our government,” he told Frontier Myanmar in the coup’s aftermath.
According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a Yangon-based group that monitors political arrests in Myanmar, more than 130 officials and lawmakers have been detained in relation to the coup.