Since February 1, 2021
as of July 30, 2021
Aung San Suu Kyi, 75, has been Myanmar’s civilian leader since March 2016 after her National League for Democracy (NLD) won 2015 elections by a landslide. Prohibited by a military-drafted constitution from becoming president because her two sons are foreign nationals, she was installed in the custom-made position of state counselor.
Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of Burmese independence hero Aung San, and was two years old when he was assassinated. After decades living abroad, she was thrust into politics when her return home coincided with a pro-democracy uprising in 1988. She subsequently led the NLD to a landslide win in 1990 elections, only to have the military nullify the results and put her under house arrest for 15 years between 1989 and 2010.
After becoming state counselor in 2016, lawmakers from her party proposed democratic changes to the 2008 constitution, written by a former military government, but were met with resistance by military MPs who control a quarter of the seat of parliament and can veto constitutional changes that threaten their political power.
Once considered a “democracy icon” by the international community, Aung San Suu Kyi earned scorn and condemnation for her refusal to denounce a violent military-led crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in 2017. Though the campaign of terror left thousands dead and forced more than 740,000 others to seek refuge in neighboring Bangladesh, she defended the military’s actions as a necessary counterinsurgency against Muslim militants who carried out deadly attacks on police outposts.
European organizations revoked Aung San Suu Kyi’s freedom awards, while the U.S. Holocaust Museum rescinded a prestigious human rights award. There were even calls to cancel the Nobel Peace Prize she was awarded in 1991. But Aung San Suu Kyi remains hugely popular inside Myanmar, and was key to her party securing another landslide victory in November 2020 elections. On Feb. 1, she and others in her political circle, including President Win Myint, arrested by the military as it launched a coup.
Myint Swe, 69, is a former general who served for the past five years as first vice president after his nomination by military bloc in parliament. He was installed Feb. 1 as acting president after top figures in the NLD-led government – including President Win Myint -- were arrested and military seized power in the coup.
Giving a semblance of constitutionality to the military takeover, Myint Swe then formally transferred power to Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, so the army chief has control over all branches of government for one year.
Myint Swe is an ethnic Mon ex-army lieutenant general who also served as acting president after the resignation of former president Htin Kyaw in March 2018. Before that, he served as chief minister of Yangon region from March 2011 to March 2016.
Like Min Aung Hlaing, Myint Swe is a graduate of the Defense Services Academy and rose through the ranks of the army. As a brigadier general, he commanded a light infantry division in 1997. He served as commander of Myanmar’s Southeastern Command and also as a member of the of Myanmar’s former military junta.
He subsequently became commander of the Yangon Command and was promoted to major general. In that position, he had family members of former dictator Ne Win arrested in 2002 after an alleged coup conspiracy was uncovered, then oversaw a 2004 purge of the military intelligence faction of former prime minister Gen. Khin Nyunt, and put down the pro-democracy Saffron Revolution in 2007.
Myint Swe went on to serve as chief of military security affairs in 2004 and became chief of the Bureau of Special Operations–5 in 2006. He was criticized for his actions after Cyclone Nargis, a deadly tropical cyclone that hit Myanmar in May 2008 and was the worst natural disaster in the country on record. Myanmar’s military leaders came under heavy fire for initially resisting large-scale international aid to deal with the catastrophe.
Myint Swe is also known for his harsh handling of activists in the run-up to the flawed 2010 general elections, in which an NLD boycott resulted in a sweeping victory for the pro-military USDP party.
Min Aung Hlaing, 64, rose steadily through the ranks of the country’s powerful armed forces to become the commander-in-chief in 2011, just as Myanmar began its democratic transition after decades of harsh military rule and international isolation.
He studied law at Yangon University in 1972-1974 before entering the Defense Services Academy, a training ground for future officers for all three branches of Myanmar military, and rose steadily through the ranks.
When Aung San Suu Kyi came to power in 2016, the reserved senior general became more involved in politics under the civilian-led government, posting photos, statements, and his meetings with foreign dignitaries on Facebook. He gained hundreds of thousands of followers until his social media account was removed following the army’s brutal crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in Rakhine state in 2017.
Despite the state counselor’s defense of the military over the genocide allegations, tensions between Aung San Suu Kyi and Min Aung Hlaing have only intensified in the past two years and came to a head after the government-appointed election commission rejected military claims of massive vote fraud in November 2020 elections that saw the military’s proxy party slump to a humiliating defeat.
In the days before the military’s power-grab, Min Aung Hlaing had issued veiled threats of a coup, but he still caught the country and the international community by surprise on Feb. 1 when a new parliament was due to convene. With his coup, he upended a decade of democratic reform and deepened the pariah status of the armed forces he commands.
Win Myint, 69, became president in March 2018, a week after the resignation of his predecessor Htin Kyaw over health concerns, and he held the position until his forced removal from office in the Feb. 1 military coup.
Before parliament elected him as president, Win Myint has served as speaker in the lower house since 2012. He was appointed a vice president prior to his elevation in a sign that he had been tipped for the presidency.
The close aide and loyalist of Aung San Suu Kyi studied geology in Yangon and later became a High Court senior attorney in 1981 and a lawyer of Myanmar’s Supreme Court. Four years later he became a High Court advocate.
He was part of a democracy uprising in 1988 and was briefly jailed by the military junta. After he was freed from prison, Win Myint won a parliamentary seat in Ayeyarwady region’s Danubyu township in the 1990 elections — the first multiparty elections since 1960. The elections were swept by Aung San Suu Kyi’s NLD, but the military junta refused to recognize the results and effectively ruled until 2011.
As the country began democratic reforms, Win Myint a lower house seat representing Ayeyarwady region’s Pathein constituency in 2012 by-elections and later became secretary of parliament’s rule of law committee. He was elected as a lower house lawmaker representing Yangon’s Tamwe township in general elections in 2015. A year later, he became speaker of the lower house, a position he held until 2018.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) says the junta has "forcibly disappeared hundreds of people" -- politicians, journalists, activists, and protesters since the coup.
The Ministry of Transport and Communications suspends all wireless broadband data services, in a move activists say is aimed at staunching the flow of videos and photos of atrocities to a global audience.
The lead lawyer defending Aung San Suu Kyi in court cases brought by the junta says the deposed state counselor, 75, is “in good health," following their first meeting -- by video -- since the coup.
Military air strikes kill six villagers in Kayin state, driving thousands of ethnic Karen people to seek refuge in Thailand, where authorities turn many back. The first air raids in the region in 30 years follow bombings of villages on March 27 and 28.
Marauding troops in Mandalay burn alive neighborhood watch volunteer Aye Ko, a 42-year-old father of four children, while he screams for help. But soldiers shoot at people who try to stop them from throwing the man on a pile of burning tires
The junta hosts a parade and banquet for Armed Forces Day as security forces spend from morning to night firing on and arresting protesters and onlookers, killing 114 people, including six children in the highest daily death toll since the coup on what the EU calls a “day of terror and dishonor.”
The military junta broadcasts a warning on state-run MRTV News that protesters must learn that they “can be in danger of getting shot in the head and back.”
The United States and Britain level economic sanctions on Myanma Economic Holdings Public Company Limited (MEHL) and Myanmar Economic Corporation Limited (MEC), two Myanmar military holding companies that serve as a critical economic lifeline for the junta.
Myanmar’s military junta releases more than 600 people detained in weeks of anti-coup demonstrations in a rare conciliatory gesture from the hardline regime but warns the group of mostly students from Yangon that if they get caught again, they will be charged and sent to prison.
Indonesia’s military chief Air Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto tells a virtual meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) defense chiefs he has "profound concerns" about the situation in Myanmar and offers help "in building professional armed forces in the context of a democracy.”
Myanmar’s last privately owned independent newspaper, The Standard Time Daily, stops publishing — putting an end to a brief eight-year period in which independent journalism was allowed after decades of military rule since 1962.
The junta imposes a 24-hour shutdown of mobile internet service in an attempt to cut off lines of communication among protesters and other members of a nationwide civil disobedience movement. At least 25 people are shot dead in cities across Myanmar.
In the bloodiest day in six weeks of anti-coup protests, about 70 people are killed, including 51 people who were gunned down in Hlaingthaya township, an industrial suburb of Yangon, after Chinese-funded factories were set ablaze.
The first six out of 37 media workers detained covering protests appear in video conference trials and all have their pre-trial extension period extended.
An Amnesty International report based on videos from nine days of increasingly violent attacks on anti-coup protesters finds government troops using military weapons inappropriate for policing, indiscriminately spraying live ammunition in urban areas, and making a sport of shooting protesters.
Soldiers begin occupying public universities, hospitals, and religious buildings nationwide and announce that five local independent news outlets — Mizzima, Democratic Voice of Burma (DVB), 7Day News, Myanmar Now, and Khit Thit news — have been banned from broadcasting, publishing, and posting news online.
Khin Maung Latt, 58, the NLD chairman in Yangon’s outlying Pabedan township, is taken away by the army and police, with local police telling his family to retrieve his body the next day and his friend saying the party official was tortured.
Junta authorities dig up the grave of Kyal Sin, a 19-year-old ethnic Chinese woman who was shot dead the previous day in Mandalay. A military vehicle and six police trucks removed her body from the Yunnan Chinese section of a local cemetery, in what was seen as an effort to cover up the cause of death.
At least 38 people are killed — the new bloodiest day of the protests — and more than 100 suffered injuries from live ammunition, tear gas, and beatings by security forces in broad daylight in rallies across the country.
The junta lays two new charges on Aung San Suu Kyi: Incitement for allegedly issuing reports with intent to cause public fear, and for possessing walkie-talkie radios without a license under the Telecommunications Law.
At least 18 people are killed when security forces fire on protesters in the bloodiest day in a month of mass demonstrations. Police in riot gear and uniformed soldiers shoot flash-bang and stun grenades and fire live and rubber bullets at protesters, causing fatalities in at least six major cities, including Yangon and Mandalay.
The U.N. envoy from Myanmar’s deposed civilian government, Kyaw Moe Tun, makes a dramatic appeal to the 193-member U.N. General Assembly to “use any means necessary to take action” to restore democracy and ensure the security of the people.
Mobs of pro-military thugs with sticks, knives, and slingshots attack anti-coup protesters at a popular rally site in Yangon, injuring at least 20 people in an escalation of violence against demonstrators.
Foreign ministers Retno Marsudi of Indonesia, Don Pramudwinai of Thailand and Wunna Maung Lwin meet briefly in Bangkok in the first known face-to-face meetings between a senior junta member and foreign governments. Marsudi urges the junta to listen to its people.
The Group of Seven industrial democracies condemn “the intimidation and oppression of those opposing the coup” and voice “concern at the crackdown on freedom of expression, including through the internet blackout and draconian changes to the law that repress free speech.”
Hundreds of thousands of protesters take to the streets of major cities for all-day “22222 Popular Uprising” — drawing on the digits in 2/22/2021 — in defiance of a warning by the coup that further demonstrations could lead to “loss of life.”
Two protesters are shot dead when riot police fire rubber and live bullets at a crowd protecting striking government shipyard workers in Mandalay.
Mya Thwe Thwe Khaing is confirmed dead after doctors at her hospital in Naypyidaw terminated her life support, becoming the first protester to die at the hands of the military regime.
Major General Zaw Min Tun, the junta spokesman, holds the regime’s first press conference since the coup, where he attempts to defend the legality of the coup and says Aung San Suu Kyi, who has not been seen in public since the coup, is “in good health,”
Nada Al-Nashif, deputy U.N. high commissioner for human rights, says U.N. rights officials are tracking more than 350 politicians and state officials, activists, civil society members, journalists, monks, and students who have been taken into custody.
President Joe Biden announces economic restrictions and imminent sanctions against coup leaders as he pressed them to release Aung San Suu Kyi and respect the results of the Nov. 8 elections.
In Naypyidaw, a 20-year-old female protester Mya Thwe Thwe Khaing is shot in the head and another person is hit in the chest after police fire about 60 shots into a crowd of demonstrators. She dies 10 days later after life support is removed.
The junta sets curfews and other restrictions in major cities after public protests across the country drew hundreds of thousands of coup opponents.
Aung San Suu Kyi releases a message to the public using the NLD Chair Facebook page urging the people to resist military coup. U Win Htein, a well-known NLD supporter, called for peaceful opposition to the coup. “I urge people not to accept the coup by the military, and resist it resoundingly,” the statement said.
The military takes control of the country for one year, citing the government’s failure to act against its claims of voter fraud and refusal to postpone the November elections or the new session of parliament. Aung San Suu Kyi, Win Myint and scores of top officials are arrested.
The UEC rejects the military’s allegations of fraud in the elections, finding no evidence to support the claims.
Military Spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun warns the army will “take action” over election disputes.
The military calls on the UEC or parliament to prove that the November election was free and fair so that it can accept that result. “If the election can be proved free, fair and transparent, it will reflect the true wishes of the people and the Tatmadaw and certain political parties will accept the results,” it says.
The military raises doubts about the constitutionality of the speaker for rejection of a special session, and insists that the request was constitutional.
Min Aung Hlaing reportedly brings up election disputes with China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi as he visits Myanmar.. Wang’s response is unknown.
The speaker rejects the call for a special session and says that the military and USDP attempt to take electoral fraud claims to parliament is “not relevant” because the UEC has the final authority to resolve those disputes.
Unelected military lawmakers USDP representatives, along with some independents and ethnic party members, call on the speaker to call a special session of Parliament to address the election concerns.
Min Aung Hlaing tells a gathering of military leaders: “In conducting an assessment after the election, unfair and dishonest practices were found.”
The military moves ahead without the UEC and releases its own “findings” of irregularities in races where the USDP suffered defeats. The report claims more than 7.6 million cases of illegal voting, an assertion rejected by election authorities.
Military news outlet Tatmadaw True News Information Team attacks the UEC and says the military’s request was legal, adding that the UEC should remove all doubts about the election by investigating the military’s claims.
The UEC rejects the military’s demand to hand over election-related documents, citing a lack of formal complaints, and says it will hand over evidence to subcommittees “only when inspections are made [following] electoral complaints.”
The military announces it will “review” the election process after claiming several disputes at polling sites across the country. A Tatmadaw affiliated news team says the military is reviewing balloting in 218 townships where military personnel and their families cast votes.
The ruling NLD wins an outright majority of 396 total seats in parliament, compared to the military-backed USDP’s 33 seats.
Min Aung Hlaing casts his ballot and tells reporters “I will accept an election result that reflects the people’s will.”
Military threatens to impeach president Win Myint and says the Constitution guarantees the army’s status as the “guardian.”
Military chief Min Aung Hlaing says “In 2015 I said that the UEC had the final say on the election results and we would accept it. This time it seems that we have to be very cautious. I don’t want it to happen.”
The military casts doubt on the ability of the Union Election Commission (UEC) to address their concerns about the Nov. 8 election. “Weakness and deficiencies which were never seen in the previous elections are appearing now. They can have adverse impacts on the image of the election.”
General Min Aung Hlaing tells a meeting of pro-military parties that he is “brave enough to do anything. Anything that could have a negative impact on the country, the people, and the future of the military [is my concern].”
The NLD wins a sweeping victory in general elections that were the first openly held since 1990. The military retained significant power under a constitution that also barred Aung San Suu Kyi from the presidency. Her government circumvents the restrictions by creating the State Counselor position for her.
