United States President Joe Biden has threatened to reinstate sanctions in Myanmar after the country’s military seized power.
Sancations had only recently been eased after the country began emerging from a decade-long military dictatorship.
On Monday, Aung San Suu Kyi and other elected officials were detained, with Ms Suu Kyi’s party accused of fraud over its landslide election win.
The UN, the UK and the EU have also condemned the military takeover amid fears of potential protests and unrest.
Ms Suu Kyi – who spent nearly 15 years in detention between 1989 and 2010 – has urged her supporters to “protest against the coup” in a letter written before she was detained. It warned the military’s actions would put the country back under a dictatorship.
The military has refused to accept November’s election results, declaring a year-long state of emergency. It has already replaced 11 ministers and deputies, including in finance, health, the interior and foreign affairs.
But in a statement, Mr Biden said, “force should never seek to overrule the will of the people or attempt to erase the outcome of a credible election”.
The US had removed sanctions over the past decade as Myanmar progressed to democracy. Mr Biden said this would be urgently reviewed, adding: “The United States will stand up for democracy wherever it is under attack.”
However it is unclear how much affect his words will have on Myanmar’s military. Experts believe that the military don’t care about Western sanctions and are more concerned about how China, Japan, South Korea respond.
China, which has previously opposed international intervention in Myanmar, urged all sides in the country to “resolve differences”. other countries in the region, including Cambodia, Thailand and the Philippines, have said it is an “internal matter”.
Meanwhile the whereabouts of Myanmar’s defacto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and her allied were not known intitally, after they were detained. However the news agency AFP reported that Aung San and President Win Myint were both under house arrest.
The National League for Democracy (NLD) has meanwhile called up on the military to accept the results of the November election where Ms Suu Kyi’s party won around 80% of the votes.
