Military coup in Myanmar

2021

The army seizes power in February 2021, detaining Aung San Suu Kyi and setting off a nationwide civil war.

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The story

On February 1, 2021, Myanmar's army, the Tatmadaw, seized power just as the new parliament was due to sit. It detained Aung San Suu Kyi, the elected leader, and President Win Myint, declared a one-year state of emergency and put Senior General Min Aung Hlaing in charge. The generals claimed fraud in the November 2020 election, which Suu Kyi's party had won by a landslide, though election observers found no evidence that could have changed the result.

Myanmar, formerly Burma, had been independent since 1948, and the army had ruled from 1962 to 2011 before a partial opening. The coup met mass protests and a civil disobedience movement, which the army crushed with deadly force, and groups of opponents formed the National Unity Government and armed People's Defense Forces. The fighting merged with the long-running wars of ethnic armed groups, and by 2025 the army had lost ground in many border areas. Monitoring groups report thousands of civilians killed.

Why it mattered

The coup ended Myanmar's decade of partial democratic opening that began around 2011.
It started a nationwide civil war that drew in dozens of armed groups and displaced millions of people.
The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners and other groups report thousands of civilians killed and many thousands detained.
The junta ran phased elections from December 2025 that critics and many governments rejected as not credible, and the conflict continues.

Sources

Myanmar's Military Seizes Power CSIS
Why Myanmar's military seized power in a coup Al Jazeera

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