YANGON: Myanmar\u2019s junta on Wednesday extended a state of emergency by six months, again delaying elections the military has promised to hold as it battles opposition across the country.
\nThe Southeast Asian nation has been in turmoil since the February 2021 coup which ended a ten-year experiment with democracy and sparked mass protests and a crackdown on dissent.
\nThree years on, the junta is struggling to crush widespread armed opposition to its rule and recently suffered a series of stunning setbacks to an alliance of ethnic minority armed groups.
\nActing president U Myint Swe \u201cannounced the extension of the state of emergency for another six months\u201d at a meeting of the national defense and security council, the junta said in a statement.
\nThe extension of the state of emergency \u2014 due to expire at midnight on Wednesday \u2014 was needed to \u201ccontinue the process of combatting terrorists,\u201d the statement added.
\nThe council discussed \u201cpreparations for holding multi-party elections\u201d and the holding of a national census at a meeting in the military-built capital Naypyidaw, it said, without giving details.
\nThe military declared a state of emergency when it ousted Aung San Suu Kyi\u2019s government in February 2021, citing unsubstantiated allegations of electoral fraud in 2020 elections her party won in a landslide. It has extended the state of emergency multiple times since, delaying fresh elections it has promised to hold.
\nMyanmar\u2019s military-drafted 2008 constitution, which the junta has said is still in force, requires authorities to hold fresh elections within six months of a state of emergency being lifted.
\nA surprise offensive in late October by an alliance of ethnic armed groups in northern Shan state sent the junta reeling.
\nThe Arakan Army (AA), Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) and the Ta\u2019ang National Liberation Army (TNLA) seized roads to the country\u2019s biggest trading partner China and captured dozens of military outposts.
\nTroops surrendered in their thousands and military units fled into India and China, prompting rare public criticism of the junta leadership by its supporters.
\nA China-brokered peace deal has since paused the fighting in the north, but the alliance has largely kept its recent gains and clashes continue elsewhere.
\nThe setbacks have also galvanized pro-democracy groups to renew their attacks on the military elsewhere in the country.
\nIndependent Myanmar analyst David Mathieson said the move was \u201ca totally expected extension for a crumbling regime.\u201d
\nMore than 4,400 people have been killed in the military\u2019s crackdown on dissent and over 25,000 arrested, according to a local monitoring group.
\nThe junta has said that \u201cterrorists\u201d opposing its rule have killed more than 6,000 civilians.
\nMore than two million people have been displaced by violence since the putsch, according to the United Nations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
YANGON: Myanmar\u2019s junta on Wednesday extended a state of emergency by six months, again delaying elections the military has promised to hold as it battles opposition across the country. The Southeast Asian nation has been in turmoil since the February 2021 coup which ended a ten-year experiment with democracy and sparked mass protests and a …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":60220,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-60216","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60216","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=60216"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60216\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":60225,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/60216\/revisions\/60225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/60220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=60216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=60216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=60216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}