Coups D’Etat and Attempted Coups D’Etat

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      Christian Nationalism Is One of Trump’s Most Powerful Weapons

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      This article is part of a collection on the events of Jan. 6, one year later. Read more in a note from Times Opinion’s politics editor Ezekiel Kweku in our Opinion Today newsletter.The most serious attempt to overthrow the American constitutional system since the Civil War would not have been feasible without the influence of America’s Christian nationalist movement. One year later, the movement seems to have learned a lesson: If it tries harder next time, it may well succeed in making the promise of American democracy a relic of the past.Christian nationalist symbolism was all over the events of Jan. 6, as observers have pointed out. But the movement’s contribution to the effort to overturn the 2020 election and install an unelected president goes much deeper than the activities of a few of its representatives on the day that marks the unsuccessful end (or at least a temporary setback) of an attempted coup.A critical precondition for Donald Trump’s attempt to retain the presidency against the will of the people was the cultivation of a substantial population of voters prepared to believe his fraudulent claim that the election was stolen — a line of argument Mr. Trump began preparing well before the election, at the first presidential debate.The role of social and right-wing media in priming the base for the claim that the election was fraudulent is by now well understood. The role of the faith-based messaging sphere is less well appreciated. Pastors, congregations and the religious media are among the most trusted sources of information for many voters. Christian nationalist leaders have established richly funded national organizations and initiatives to exploit this fact. The repeated message that they sought to deliver through these channels is that outside sources of information are simply not credible. The creation of an information bubble, impervious to correction, was the first prerequisite of Mr. Trump’s claim.The coup attempt also would not have been possible without the unshakable sense of persecution that movement leaders have cultivated among the same base of voters. Christian nationalism today begins with the conviction that conservative Christians are the most oppressed group in American society. Among leaders of the movement, it is a matter of routine to hear talk that they are engaged in a “battle against tyranny,” and that the Bible may soon be outlawed.A final precondition for the coup attempt was the belief, among the target population, that the legitimacy of the United States government derives from its commitment to a particular religious and cultural heritage, and not from its democratic form. It is astonishing to many that the leaders of the Jan. 6 attack on the constitutional electoral process styled themselves as “patriots.” But it makes a glimmer of sense once you understand that their allegiance is to a belief in blood, earth and religion, rather than to the mere idea of a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”Given the movement’s role in laying the groundwork for the coup attempt, its leaders faced a quandary when Mr. Trump began to push his repeatedly disproven claims — and that quandary turned into a test of character on Jan. 6. Would they go along with an attempt to overthrow America’s democratic system?Some attempted to rewrite the facts about Jan. 6. The former Republican Representative Michele Bachmann suggested the riot was the work of “paid rabble rousers,” while the activist and author Lance Wallnau, who has praised Mr. Trump as “God’s chaos candidate,” blamed “the local antifa mob.” Many leaders, like Charlie Kirk, appeared to endorse Mr. Trump’s claims about a fraudulent election. Others, like Michael Farris, president and chief executive of the religious right legal advocacy group Alliance Defending Freedom, provided indirect but no less valuable support by concern-trolling about supposed “constitutional irregularities” in battleground states.None appeared willing to condemn Mr. Trump for organizing an attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power to President-elect Joe Biden. On the contrary, the Rev. Franklin Graham, writing on Facebook, condemned “these ten” from Mr. Trump’s “own party” who voted to impeach him and mused, “It makes you wonder what the thirty pieces of silver were that Speaker Pelosi promised for this betrayal.”At Christian nationalist conferences I have been reporting on, I have heard speakers go out of their way to defend and even lionize the Jan. 6 insurrectionists. At the Road to Majority conference, which was held in Central Florida in June 2021, the author and radio host Eric Metaxas said, “The reason I think we are being so persecuted, why the Jan. 6 folks are being persecuted, when you’re over the target like that, oh my.” At that same conference, the political commentator Dinesh D’Souza, in conversation with the religious right strategist Ralph Reed, said, “The people who are really getting shafted right now are the Jan. 6 protesters,” before adding, “We won’t defend our guys even when they’re good guys.” Mr. Reed nodded in response and replied, “I think Donald Trump taught our movement a lot.”Movement leaders now appear to be working to prime the base for the next attempt to subvert the electoral process. At dozens of conservative churches in swing states this past year, groups of pastors were treated to presentations by an initiative called Faith Wins. Featuring speakers like David Barton, a key figure in the fabrication of Christian nationalist myths about history, and led by Chad Connelly, a Republican political veteran, Faith Wins serves up elections skepticism while demanding that pastors mobilize their flocks to vote “biblical” values. “Every pastor you know needs to make sure 100 percent of the people in their pews are voting, and voting biblical values,” Mr. Connelly told the assembled pastors at a Faith Wins event in Chantilly, Va. in September.“The church is not a cruise ship, the church is a battleship,” added Byron Foxx, an evangelist touring with Faith Wins. The Faith Wins team also had at its side Hogan Gidley, a deputy press secretary in the Trump White House, who now runs the Center for Election Integrity, an initiative of the America First Policy Institute, a group led in part by former members of the Trump administration. Mr. Gidley informed the gathering that his group is “nonpartisan” — and then went on to mention that in the last election cycle there were “A lot of rogue secretaries of state, a lot of rogue governors.”He was presumably referring to Brad Raffensperger, the Republican secretary of state of Georgia who earned the ire of Trumpists by rebuffing the former president’s request to find him an additional 11,780 votes. “You saw the stuff in Arizona, you’re going to see more stuff in Wisconsin, these are significant issues, and we can’t be dismissed out of hand anymore, the facts are too glaring,” Mr. Gidley said. In fact, the Republican-backed audit of votes in Arizona’s largest county confirmed that President Biden won Arizona by more votes than previously thought. But the persecution narrative is too politically useful to discard simply because it’s not true.Even as movement leaders are preparing for a possible restoration of a Trumpist regime — a period they continue to regard as a golden age in retrospect — they are advancing in parallel on closely related fronts. Among the most important of these has to do with public education.In the panic arising out of the claim that America’s schools are indoctrinating young children in critical race theory, or C.R.T., it isn’t hard to detect the ritualized workings of the same information bubble, persecution complex and sense of entitlement that powered the coup attempt. Whatever you make of the new efforts in state legislatures to impose new “anti-C.R.T.” restrictions on speech and teaching in public schools, the more important consequence is to extend the religious right’s longstanding program to undermine confidence in public education, an effort that religious right leaders see as essential both for the movement’s long-term funding prospects and for its antidemocratic agenda.Opposition to public education is part of the DNA of America’s religious right. The movement came together in the 1970s not solely around abortion politics, as later mythmakers would have it, but around the outrage of the I.R.S. threatening to take away the tax-exempt status of church-led “segregation academies.” In 1979, Jerry Falwell said he hoped to see the day when there wouldn’t be “any public schools — the churches will have taken them over again and Christians will be running them.”Today, movement leaders have their eye on the approximately $700 billion that federal, state, and local governments spend yearly on education. The case of Carson v. Makin, which is before the Supreme Court this term and involves a challenge, in Maine, to prohibitions on using state tuition aid to attend religious schools, could force taxpayers to fund sectarian schools no matter how discriminatory their policies or fanatical their teachings. The endgame is to get a chunk of this money with the help either of state legislatures or the Supreme Court, which in its current configuration might well be convinced that religious schools have a right to taxpayer funds.This longstanding anti-public school agenda is the driving force behind the movement’s effort to orchestrate the anti-C.R.T. campaign. The small explosions of hate detonating in public school boards across the nation are not entirely coming from the grass roots up. The Family Research Council, a Washington, D.C.-based Christian right policy group, recently held an online School Board Boot Camp, a four-hour training session providing instruction on how to run for school boards and against C.R.T. and to recruit others to do so. The Bradley Foundation, Heritage Action for America, and The Manhattan Institute are among those providing support for groups on the forefront of the latest public school culture wars.A decade ago, the radical aims at the ideological core of the Christian nationalist movement were there to see for anybody who looked. Not many bothered to look, and those who did were often dismissed as alarmist. More important, most Republican Party leaders at the time distanced themselves from theocratic extremists. They avoided the rhetoric of Seven Mountains dominionism, an ideology that calls explicitly for the domination of the seven “peaks” of modern civilization (including government and education) by Christians of the correct, supposedly biblical variety.What a difference a decade makes. National organizations like the Faith & Freedom Coalition and the Ziklag Group, which bring together prominent Republican leaders with donors and religious right activists, feature “Seven Mountains” workshops and panels at their gatherings. Nationalist leaders and their political dependents in the Republican Party now state quite openly what before they whispered to one another over their prayer breakfasts. Whether the public will take notice remains to be seen.Katherine Stewart (@kathsstewart) is the author of “The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      As U.S. Navigates Crisis in Haiti, a Bloody History Looms Large

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      American policy decisions are vital to understanding Haiti’s political instability, and why it remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.In September 1994, the United States was on the verge of invading Haiti.Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the country’s first democratically elected president, had been deposed in a military coup three years earlier. Haiti had descended into chaos. Gangs and paramilitaries terrorized the population — taking hostages, assassinating dissidents and burning crops. International embargoes had strangled the economy, and tens of thousands of people were trying to emigrate to America.But just days before the first U.S. troops would land in Haiti, Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a senator on the Foreign Affairs Committee, spoke against a military intervention. He argued that the United States had more pressing crises — including ethnic cleansing in Bosnia — and that Haiti was not especially important to American interests.“I think it’s probably not wise,” Mr. Biden said of the planned invasion in an interview with television host Charlie Rose.He added: “If Haiti — a God-awful thing to say — if Haiti just quietly sunk into the Caribbean or rose up 300 feet, it wouldn’t matter a whole lot in terms of our interest.”Despite Mr. Biden’s apprehension, the invasion went forward and the Haitian military junta surrendered within hours. Mr. Aristide was soon restored to power, and the Clinton administration began deporting thousands of Haitians.Nearly a decade later, Haiti’s constitutional order would collapse again, prompting another U.S. military intervention, more migrants and more deportations. As rebels threatened to invade the capital in 2004, Mr. Aristide resigned under pressure from U.S. officials. A provisional government was formed with American backing. The violence and unrest continued.That cycle of crisis and U.S. intervention in Haiti — punctuated by periods of relative calm but little improvement in the lives of most people — has persisted to this day. Since July, a presidential assassination, an earthquake and a tropical storm have deepened the turmoil.Mr. Biden, now president, is overseeing yet another intervention in Haiti’s political affairs, one that his critics say is following an old Washington playbook: backing Haitian leaders accused of authoritarian rule, either because they advance American interests or because U.S. officials fear the instability of a transition of power. Making sense of American policy in Haiti over the decades — driven at times by economic interests, Cold War strategy and migration concerns — is vital to understanding Haiti’s political instability, and why it remains the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, even after an infusion of more than $5 billion in U.S. aid in the last decade alone.A bloody history of American influence looms large, and a century of U.S. efforts to stabilize and develop the country have ultimately ended in failure.Marines in Haiti marched during the last days of occupation, which ended in 1934 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy.Bettmann/Getty ImagesThe American Occupation (1915-34)The politics of slavery and racial prejudice were key factors in early American hostility to Haiti. After the Haitian Revolution, Thomas Jefferson and many in Congress feared that the newly founded Black republic would spread slave revolts in the United States.For decades, the United States refused to formally recognize Haiti’s independence from France, and at times tried to annex Haitian territory and conduct diplomacy through threats.It was against this backdrop that Haiti became increasingly unstable. The country went through seven presidents between 1911 and 1915, all either assassinated or removed from power. Haiti was heavily in debt, and Citibank — then the National City Bank of New York — and other American banks confiscated much of Haiti’s gold reserves during that period with the help of U.S. Marines.Roger L. Farnham, who managed National City Bank’s assets in Haiti, then lobbied President Woodrow Wilson for a military intervention to stabilize the country and force the Haitian government to pay its debts, convincing the president that France or Germany might invade if America did not.The military occupation that followed remains one of the darkest chapters of American policy in the Caribbean. The United States installed a puppet regime that rewrote Haiti’s constitution and gave America control over the country’s finances. Forced labor was used for construction and other work to repay debts. Thousands were killed by U.S. Marines.The occupation ended in 1934 under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy. As the last Marines departed Haiti, riots broke out in Port-au-Prince, the capital. Bridges were destroyed, telephone lines were cut and the new president declared martial law and suspended the constitution. The United States did not completely relinquish control of Haiti’s finances until 1947.François Duvalier, top, and his son Jean-Claude, bottom, were both dictators who presented themselves as anti-communist to gain the support of the United States.Agence France–Presse/ Getty ImagesThe Duvalier DynastyThe ruthless dictator François Duvalier took power in 1957, as Fidel Castro led a revolution in Cuba and as U.S. interests in the region were becoming increasingly focused on limiting the influence of the Soviet Union.Duvalier, like many other dictators in the Caribbean and Latin America, recognized that he could secure American support if he presented his government as anti-communist. U.S. officials privately described Duvalier as “the worst dictator in the hemisphere,” while deeming him preferable to the perceived risk of a communist Haiti.When the United States suspended aid programs because of atrocities committed soon after Duvalier took office, the Haitian leader hired public relations firms, including one run by Roosevelt’s youngest son, to repair the relationship.Duvalier — and later his son Jean-Claude — ultimately enjoyed significant American support in the form of aid (much of it embezzled by the family), training for Haitian paramilitary forces who would go on to commit atrocities and even a Marine deployment in 1959 despite the protests of American diplomats in Haiti.By 1961, the United States was sending Duvalier $13 million in aid a year — equivalent to half of Haiti’s national budget.Even after the United States had tired of Duvalier’s brutality and unstable leadership, President John F. Kennedy demurred on a plot to remove him and mandate free elections. When Duvalier died nearly a decade later, the United States supported the succession of his son. By 1986, the United States had spent an estimated $900 million supporting the Duvalier dynasty as Haiti plunged deeper into poverty and corruption.President Jovenel Moïse, who was assassinated in July, ruled Haiti by decree and turned to authoritarian tactics with the tacit approval of the Trump and Biden administrations.Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesFavored CandidatesAt crucial moments in Haiti’s democratic era, the United States has intervened to pick winners and losers — fearful of political instability and surges of Haitian migration.After Mr. Aristide was ousted in 1991, the U.S. military reinstalled him. He resigned in disgrace less than a decade later, but only after American diplomats urged him to do so. According to reports from that time, the George W. Bush administration had undermined Mr. Aristide’s government in the years before his resignationFrançois Pierre-Louis is a political science professor at Queens College in New York who served in Mr. Aristide’s cabinet and advised former Prime Minister Jacques-Édouard Alexis. Haitians are often suspicious of American involvement in their affairs, he said, but still take signals from U.S. officials seriously because of the country’s long history of influence over Haitian politics.For example, after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, American and other international diplomats pressured Haiti to hold elections that year despite the devastation. The vote was disastrously mismanaged, and international observers and many Haitians considered the results illegitimate.Responding to the allegations of voter fraud, American diplomats insisted that one candidate in the second round of the presidential election be replaced with a candidate who received fewer votes — at one point threatening to halt aid over the dispute. Hillary Clinton, then the secretary of state, confronted then-President René Préval about putting Michel Martelly, America’s preferred candidate, on the ballot. Mr. Martelly won that election in a landslide.A direct line of succession can be traced from that election to Haiti’s current crisis.Mr. Martelly endorsed Jovenel Moïse as his successor. Mr. Moïse, who was elected in 2016, ruled by decree and turned to authoritarian tactics with the tacit approval of the Trump and Biden administrations.Mr. Moïse appointed Ariel Henry as acting prime minister earlier this year. Then on July 7, Mr. Moïse was assassinated.Mr. Henry has been accused of being linked to the assassination plot, and political infighting that had quieted after international diplomats endorsed his claim to power has reignited. Mr. Martelly, who had clashed with Mr. Moïse over business interests, is considering another run for the presidency.Robert Maguire, a Haiti scholar and retired professor of international affairs at George Washington University, said the instinct in Washington to back members of Haiti’s political elite who appeared allied with U.S. interests was an old one, with a history of failure.Another approach could have more success, according to Mr. Maguire and other scholars, Democratic lawmakers and a former U.S. envoy for Haiti policy. They say the United States should support a grass-roots commission of civic leaders, who are drafting plans for a new provisional government in Haiti.That process, however, could take years. More

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      Behind the Scenes of the Events of Jan. 6

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      More from our inbox:‘I Won’t Mount a Coup.’ Now Is That Too Much to Ask?Missing Yazidis, Captives of ISIS: ‘The World Must Act’Clerical Celibacy in the Catholic ChurchTaxing the UltrarichAn appearance in 2019 on Mark Levin’s Fox News show brought John Eastman, right, to President Donald J. Trump’s attention.via Fox News ChannelTo the Editor:Re “He Drafted Plan to Keep Trump in White House” (front page, Oct. 3) and “Jan. 6 Was Worse Than It Looked” (editorial, Oct. 3):Regarding my advice to Vice President Mike Pence in the days before the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6: Although I take issue with some statements in the front-page news article, its most important point, one backed up by very thorough reporting, is that I did not recommend “that Mr. Pence could simply disregard the law and summarily reject electors of certain key battleground states,” as your editorial contends.Rather, as your own reporters noted, I told Mr. Pence that even if he did have such power, “it would be foolish for him to exercise it until state legislatures certified a new set of electors for Mr. Trump.”That honest bit of reporting contradicts not only your editorial but also myriad other news accounts to the same effect.John C. EastmanUpland, Calif.The writer is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute.To the Editor:Reading the excellent but frightening editorial “Jan. 6 Was Worse Than It Looked,” I was not surprised that the former president wanted to stay in power despite losing a fair election. What was staggering was the number of people who wanted to help him.Jana GoldmanHonor, Mich.To the Editor:Your editorial hit on a serious issue that worries us all, including your many friends in Australia. An independent electoral commission manages, scrutinizes, counts the votes and announces the results of all state and federal elections in Australia.No one ever doubts its word, and challenges are resolved by it quickly and based on evidence that is made publicly available, and only very rarely end up in the courts. The commission also draws electoral boundaries, according to statutory formulas, so there’s no possibility of gerrymandering.We find the heavy politicization of your system puzzling.Nuncio D’AngeloSydney, AustraliaTo the Editor:In “He Drafted Plan to Keep Trump in White House,” John Eastman’s influence is attributed to giving President Trump “what he wanted to hear.”The former F.B.I. director William Webster gave me the most important advice on leadership when I was a White House fellow serving as one of his special assistants. As the only nonlawyer on his executive staff, I was unsure about my job description until he explained, “Your job is to make sure I hear things people think I don’t want to hear or that they don’t want me to hear.” Within a day, it was clear what that entailed.I have shared that advice, and it has proved valuable for countless leaders. Mr. Eastman demonstrates the risks of disregarding it.Merrie SpaethPlano, Texas‘I Won’t Mount a Coup.’ Now Is That Too Much to Ask?  Jason Andrew for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Is there a chance that in the 2024 election all the presidential candidates would sign a pledge that if they lose the election they will not try to overthrow the government?William Dodd BrownChicagoMissing Yazidis, Captives of ISIS: ‘The World Must Act’The Sharya camp near Duhok in August.Hawre Khalid for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Yazidis Know Some of Their Missing Are Alive, as Captives” (news article, Oct. 4):As a Yazidi, I read this piece with a heavy heart, and I ache to do more for these women, children and families. I have been to the camps in Duhok, in northern Iraq, and met with many families hoping for their loved ones to return, but they can barely afford daily necessities, let alone ransoms.I believe that what we need is a task force, comprising Iraqi authorities, U.N. agencies and civil society organizations, formed with the sole goal of searching for and rescuing Yazidi captives of the Islamic State.Opportunities for asylum must be expanded and support given for their recovery. Every necessary resource should be committed to ensuring that survivors can live in freedom and safety for the first time in years.Seven years is an unthinkable amount of time to be held in sexual slavery. We must act. The world must act to rescue women and children from captivity.Abid ShamdeenWashingtonThe writer is executive director of Nadia’s Initiative, which advocates for survivors of sexual violence.Clerical Celibacy in the Catholic Church Benoit Tessier/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “Report Describes Abuse of Minors Permeating Catholic Church in France” (news article, Oct. 6):Clerical celibacy in the Catholic Church wasn’t imposed until the 12th century. How many more of these stories do we have to read until the church acknowledges that it made a dire, if well-intentioned, mistake by instituting that policy?Kate RoseHoustonTaxing the Ultrarich  Erik CarterTo the Editor:Re “This Is How America’s Richest Families Stay That Way,” by Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Sept. 24):Mr. Kaiser-Schatzlein states that the ultrarich could pass on stock bought for $1 but worth $100 at death, and that the inheritors would pay tax only on gains above the $100. While that is accurate, it neglects to mention that instead of paying the federal capital gains rate of 20 percent on the $99 gain, the estate would pay the estate tax of 40 percent on the full $100 value (since we are discussing the ultrarich, the $11.7 million exclusion for the estate tax would be a rounding error).This omission gives the misleading impression that the inheritance would be untaxed, when in fact it would be taxed at a higher rate.Peter KnellPasadena, Calif.The writer is managing director of an investment management company. More

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      The Trump Coup Is Still Raging

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      What happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6 was not a coup attempt. It was half of a coup attempt — the less important half.The more important part of the coup attempt — like legal wrangling in states and the attempts to sabotage the House commission’s investigation of Jan. 6 — is still going strong. These are not separate and discrete episodes but parts of a unitary phenomenon that, in just about any other country, would be characterized as a failed coup d’état.As the Republican Party tries to make up its mind between wishing away the events of Jan. 6 or celebrating them, one thing should be clear to conservatives estranged from the party: We can’t go home again.The attempted coup’s foot soldiers have dug themselves in at state legislatures. For example, last week in Florida State Representative Anthony Sabatini introduced a draft of legislation that would require an audit of the 2020 general election in the state’s largest (typically Democratic-heavy) counties, suggesting without basis that it may show that these areas cheated to inflate Joe Biden’s vote count.Florida’s secretary of state, a Republican, knows that an audit is nonsense and has said so. But the point of an audit would not be to change the outcome (Mr. Trump won the state). The point is not even really to conduct an audit.The obviously political object is to legitimize the 2020 coup attempt in order to soften the ground for the next one — and there will be a next one.In the broad strategy, the frenzied mobs were meant to inspire terror — and obedience among Republicans — while Rudy Giuliani and his co-conspirators tried to get the election nullified on some risible legal pretext or another. Republicans needed both pieces — neither the mob violence nor an inconclusive legal ruling would have been sufficient on its own to keep Mr. Trump in power.True to form, Mr. Trump was able to supply the mob but not the procedural victory. His coup attempt was frustrated in no small part by a thin gray line of bureaucratic fortitude — Republican officials at the state and local levels who had the grit to resist intense pressure from the president and do their jobs.Current efforts like the one in Florida are intended to terrorize them into compliance today or, short of that, to push such officials into retirement so that they can be replaced with more pliant partisans. The lonely little band of Republican officials who stopped the 2020 coup is going to be smaller and lonelier the next time around.That’s why the Great Satan for the Republican Party right now is not Mr. Biden but Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, one of a small number of Republicans willing to speak honestly about Jan. 6 and to support the investigation into it — and willing to contradict powerful people like Kevin McCarthy of California, who has falsely (and preposterously) claimed that the F.B.I. has cleared Mr. Trump of any involvement in Jan. 6.The emerging Republican orthodoxy on Jan. 6 is created by pure political engineering, with most party leaders either minimizing, halfheartedly defending or wholeheartedly celebrating the coup, depending on their audience and ambitions. Pragmatic party leaders like Mitch McConnell, and others like him who were never passionately united with Mr. Trump but need his voters, are hoping that the memory of the riot gets swept away by the ugly news from Afghanistan and the usual hurly-burly. But other Republicans have praised the rioters: Representative Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina insisted that those who have been jailed are “political prisoners” and warned that “bloodshed” might follow another “stolen” election. The middle-ground Republican consensus is that the sacking of the Capitol was at worst the unfortunate escalation of a well-intentioned protest involving legitimate electoral grievances. More

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      Three Months After Coup, Myanmar Returns to the ‘Bad Old Days’

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      Every night at 8, the stern-faced newscaster on Myanmar military TV announces the day’s hunted. The mug shots of those charged with political crimes appear onscreen. Among them are doctors, students, beauty queens, actors, reporters, even a pair of makeup bloggers.Some of the faces look puffy and bruised, the likely result of interrogations. They are a warning not to oppose the military junta that seized power in a Feb. 1 coup and imprisoned the country’s civilian leaders.As the midnight insects trill, the hunt intensifies. Military censors sever the internet across most of Myanmar, matching the darkness outside with an information blackout. Soldiers sweep through the cities, arresting, abducting and assaulting with slingshots and rifles.The nightly banging on doors, as arbitrary as it is dreaded, galvanizes a frenzy of self-preservation. Residents delete their Facebook accounts, destroy incriminating mobile phone cards and erase traces of support for Myanmar’s elected government. As sleep proves elusive, it’s as if much of the nation is suffering a collective insomnia.Little more than a decade ago, the most innocuous of infractions — owning a photograph of pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi or an unregistered cellphone or a single note of foreign currency — could mean a prison sentence. Some of the military’s Orwellian diktats rivaled those of North Korea.Security forces search for protesters as they crack down on a peaceful demonstration against the military coup in Yangon, in April.The New York TimesThree months after Myanmar’s experiment in democracy was strangled by the generals’ power grab, the sense of foreboding has returned. There is no indication that it will ease. For the better part of 60 years, the military’s rule over Myanmar was animated not by grand ideology but by fear. Today, with much of the population determined to resist the coup-makers, a new junta is consolidating its grip by resorting, yet again, to a reign of terror.“Myanmar is going back to the bad old days when people were so scared that their neighbors would inform on them and they could get arrested for no reason at all,” said Ko Moe Yan Naing, a former police officer who is now in hiding after opposing the coup.Prisons are once again filled with poets, Buddhist monks and politicians. Hundreds more, many young men, have disappeared, their families ignorant of their whereabouts, according to a group that tracks the military’s detentions. More than 770 civilians have been killed by security forces since the putsch, among them dozens of children.As they did years before, people walk the streets with the adrenaline-fueled sense of neck hairs prickling, a glance from a soldier or a lingering gaze from a passer-by chilling the air.Protesters fight with security forces in Yangon in March.The New York TimesYet if the junta is reflexively returning to rule by fear, it is also holding hostage a changed country. The groundswell of opposition to the coup, which has sustained protests in hundreds of cities and towns, was surely not in the military’s game plan, making its crackdown all the riskier. Neither the outcome of the putsch nor the fate of the resistance is preordained.Myanmar’s full emergence from isolation — economic, political and social — only came five years ago when the military began sharing power with an elected government headed by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi. A population that barely had any connection to the internet quickly made up for lost time. Today, its citizenry is well versed in social media and the power of protests tethered to global movements. They know how to spot a good political meme on the internet.Their resistance to the coup has included a national strike and a civil disobedience movement, which have paralyzed the economy and roiled the government. Banks and hospitals are all but shut. Although the United Nations has warned that half the country could be living in poverty by next year because of the pandemic and the political crisis, the democratic opposition’s resolve shows no sign of weakening.More than 770 civilians have been killed by security forces since the putsch.The New York TimesIn late March, Ma Thuzar Nwe, a history teacher, branded her skin with defiance. The tattoo on the nape of her neck reads: “Spring Revolution Feb. 2021.”The police are now stopping people on the streets, looking for evidence on their phones or bodies of support for the National Unity Government, a civilian authority set up after the elected leadership was expelled by the military. A popular tactic is to affix an image of Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the coup leader, on the sole of a shoe, smashing his face into the ground with each step. During spot checks, the police now demand that people show their soles.Ms. Thuzar Nwe says she wears her hair down to cover her tattoo, hoping the police won’t be too inquisitive.“In Myanmar culture, if a woman has a tattoo, she’s a bad girl,” she said. “I broke the rules of culture. This revolution is a rare chance to eradicate dictatorship from the country.”But the Tatmadaw, as the Myanmar military is known, has built an entire infrastructure dedicated to one purpose: perpetuating its power for power’s sake.Its bureaucracy of oppression is formidable. An army of informers, known as “dalan,” has reappeared, monitoring whispers and neighbors’ movements.The blandly named General Administration Department, a vast apparatus that remained under military control even after the army had started sharing authority with the civilian government, is once again pressuring administrators to keep tabs on everyone’s political views. And local officials have taken to banging on doors and peering in homes, as a dreaded system of household registration is reintroduced.Military vehicles during the national Armed Forces Day in Naypyidaw, Myanmar, in March.Associated PressEach morning, as residents count the dead and missing, the military’s media present its version of reality, all the more pervasive since the junta has revoked the publishing licenses of major private newspapers. Democracy will return soon, the military’s headlines insist. Banking services are running “as usual.” Health care with “modern machinery” is available. Government ministries are enjoying English-proficiency courses. Soft-shell crab cultivation is “thriving” and penetrating the foreign market.The Tatmadaw may have modernized its military arsenal, acquiring Chinese-made weapons and Russian fighter jets. But its propaganda is stuck in a time warp from back when few challenged its narrative. There is no mention in its media of the military’s killing spree, the broken economy or the growing armed resistance. On Wednesday, the State Administration Council, as the junta calls itself, banned satellite TV.For all the fear percolating in Myanmar, the resistance has only hardened. On Wednesday, the National Unity Government said it was forming a “people’s defense force” to counter the Tatmadaw. Two days before, ethnic insurgents fighting in the borderlands shot down a Tatmadaw helicopter.Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing in 2016.Hein Htet/European Pressphoto AgencyIgnoring such developments, the Tatmadaw’s media instead devote space to the supposed infractions of thousands of civilians who must be locked up for “undermining state peace and stability.” Among them are AIDS patients so weak they can barely walk.More than for the civilian population, such propaganda is meant to convince the military ranks that the coup was necessary, Tatmadaw insiders said. Sequestered in military compounds without good internet access, soldiers have little ability to tap into the outrage of fellow citizens. Their information diet is composed of military TV, military newspapers and the echo chambers of military-dominated Facebook on the rare occasions they can get online.Still, news does filter in, and some officers have broken rank. In recent weeks, about 80 Myanmar Air Force officers have deserted and are now in hiding, according to fellow military personnel.“Politics are not the business of soldiers,” said an air force captain who is now in hiding and does not want his name used because his family might be punished for his desertion. “Now the Tatmadaw have become the terrorists, and I don’t want to be part of it.”Myanmar’s citizens are now well versed in social media and the power of protests tethered to global movements, since the country opened up a few years ago.The New York TimesIn the cities, almost everyone seems to know someone who has been arrested or beaten or forced to pay a bribe to the security forces in exchange for freedom.Last month, Ma May Thaw Zin, a 19-year-old law student, joined a flash mob protest in Yangon, the country’s biggest city. The police, she said, detained several young women and crammed them into an interrogation center cell so small they barely had room to sit on the floor.For a whole day, there was no food. Ms. May Thaw Zin said she resorted to drinking from the toilet. The interrogations were just her and a clutch of men. They rubbed against her and kicked her breasts and face with their boots, she said. On the fourth day, after men shoved the barrel of a pistol against the black hood over her head, she was released. The bruises remain.Since she returned home, some family members have refused to have anything to do with her because she was caught protesting, Ms. May Thaw Zin said. Even if they hate the coup, even if they know their futures have been blunted, the instincts of survival have kicked in.“They are afraid,” she said, but “I can’t accept that my country will go back to the old dark age.”Riot police prepared to remove protesters who attempted to block a motorcade of security forces in February.The New York Times More

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      Latest Claim in the Effort Against Aung San Suu Kyi: A Bag of Cash

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      The Myanmar military’s latest accusations against the ousted civilian leader suggest a monthslong campaign to neutralize the country’s most popular politician.The Myanmar construction tycoon spoke in a faltering monotone, blinking fast and gulping occasionally for air. He said that over the past several years he had handed a total of $550,000 to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the civilian leader of Myanmar who was ousted in a military coup last month.On two occasions, he had provided $100,000 and $150,000, the businessman said in a confessional statement broadcast on a military television network Wednesday night. In the English subtitles, the money had been handed over in a “black envelope.” In Burmese, the description had him presenting the money, meant to enhance his business ties, in a paper gift bag.Either way, the envelope or gift bag would have been very large to hold that much cash.The televised statement by U Maung Weik, a military crony who was once imprisoned for drug trafficking, appears to be the latest act in an intricately planned effort to impugn Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi.Before elections in November, an online campaign amplified by pro-military groups raised a litany of unproven allegations against the civilian leader, who had shared power with the military for five years. Once her party won a landslide victory, military-linked forces stepped up their attacks on her, calling her corrupt and under the influence of foreigners.Then, after the military staged its Feb. 1 coup, security forces detained individuals who had been named months earlier as key members of a foreign plot, blessed by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, to destabilize Myanmar. The chronology suggests a well-planned effort to rid the country of its most beloved leader.Protesters clashing with security forces in Yangon, Myanmar, on Tuesday.The New York Times“We have seen their attempt to arrest Daw Aung San Suu Kyi since before the election,” said U Khin Maung Zaw, her lawyer. He has not been able to see his client nor has he been given power of attorney so he can formally handle her legal affairs.Days before the November polls, the coordinated attacks on social media accused Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and her governing National League for Democracy of illegally profiting from foreign funding. If the National League for Democracy is found guilty of having been tainted by foreign influence, the party could be disbanded, neutralizing the most popular political force in Myanmar’s history.The targeted campaign — disseminated on Facebook, YouTube, a custom-built website and spoofed emails that shared similar branding and cross-posting — implied that a cabal of Western interests was working with the National League for Democracy to steal the elections and upend Myanmar governance. The custom-built website was developed from a folder named after the military’s proxy party, a digital forensics investigation found.Chief among the supposed plotters was George Soros, the American philanthropist whose Open Society Foundation promotes democracy worldwide.One of the pre-election posts claimed that the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation, a charity group set up in the name of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s mother, was secretly working with the Open Society Foundation to destabilize Myanmar.The implications of the social media attack became clearer this month. Mr. Maung Weik, the construction tycoon, claimed in the television broadcast on Wednesday that he had donated money to the charity. Last week, the military accused Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi of having siphoned off some money from the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation. At least two of the charity’s employees have been detained in recent weeks.On Monday, the same military-controlled television network that broadcast Mr. Maung Weik’s statement announced that arrest warrants had been issued for 11 employees of Open Society Myanmar for aiding the anti-coup protest movement with, among other things, illegal bank transactions. The group’s finance manager has been detained.Volunteer medical doctors operate on an 18-year-old protestor wounded during a crackdown in Yangon, Wednesday.The New York TimesOpen Society Myanmar has denied that it acted illegally by withdrawing funds from its own local bank account.Another pre-election social media attack pointed fingers at a deputy industry minister, a deputy finance minister and an Australian economic adviser to Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, reproaching them for machinations to control the country. After the military ousted the civilian government last month, all three were detained.The military’s takeover of power has galvanized tremendous pushback from the people of Myanmar. Since the coup, millions of people have demonstrated and participated in labor strikes against the regime.The military has responded with the kind of violence normally reserved for the battlefield. In attacks on protesters, security forces have killed at least 215 people, mostly by gunshot, according to a local group that tallies political imprisonments and deaths; more than 2,000 people have been detained for political reasons since the coup.This week, members of a group representing the disbanded Parliament were charged with high treason. So was Myanmar’s envoy to the United Nations, who gave an impassioned speech last month decrying the military’s seizure of power.On Wednesday, the last of Myanmar’s major independent newspapers ceased publication. More than 30 journalists have been detained or pursued by authorities since the coup. The country, for decades under the military’s fist, is rapidly losing whatever democratic reforms had been introduced over the past few years.Protesters building a roadblock on a bridge, Yangon, on Tuesday.The New York TimesSince Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was locked up in a pre-dawn raid on the day of the coup, she has been formally charged with various crimes that could see her imprisoned for years. The charges include esoteric crimes such as illegally importing foreign walkie-talkies and contravening coronavirus regulations.Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has not yet been charged in relation to Mr. Maung Weik’s accusations that he gave her money to better his business relationship with the civilian government. The military television network said that investigators were currently looking into the case.Last week, the military also accused her of illegally accepting 25 pounds of gold and about $600,000. Mr. Maung Weik’s accusations of money transfers are separate from this figure.If charges are brought in any such cases, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, 75, could face life imprisonment.“I 100 percent believe that their accusations against Daw Aung San Suu Kyi are groundless,” said U Aung Kyi Nyunt, a spokesman for the National League for Democracy.Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s popularity in Myanmar far outstrips that of the generals who have controlled the country for most of the past 60 years. She spent 15 years under house arrest and won the Nobel Peace Prize for her commitment to nonviolent resistance.While her international reputation faded after she defended the military’s ethnic cleansing campaign against Rohingya Muslims, her star appeal endured at home. The National League for Democracy’s electoral performance last year bested its 2015 landslide. The military has called fraud on the polls.Mr. Khin Maung Zaw, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s lawyer, said that by silencing and imprisoning her the military regime risked burnishing her popularity further.“They should not let Daw Aung San Suu Kyi change from a hero to a martyr,” he said. “If Daw Aung San Suu Kyi becomes a martyr, then the strength of the people will never be destroyed, and her martyrdom will become the people’s greatest strength.”A Yangon neighborhood after clashes on Tuesday.The New York Times More

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      Did a Coup Attempt Really Happen Two Weeks Ago in Haiti?

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storyOpinionSupported byContinue reading the main storyDid a Coup Attempt Really Happen Two Weeks Ago in Haiti?The Biden administration must speak up for human rights in the island nation.Ms. Stockman is a member of the editorial board.Feb. 23, 2021A copy of the Haitian Constitution wrapped in an American flag at a march in Port-au-Prince on Feb. 10. The Haitian president’s supporters and opponents disagree on when his term ends.Credit…Valerie Baeriswyl/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesCatherine Buteau, a 33-year-old marketing and communications specialist in Montreal, woke up on Feb. 7 to a lot of missed calls on her phone. Her relatives in Haiti had been desperately calling her. Her father, mother and aunt had been snatched from their beds in Port-au-Prince in the middle of the night.“No one knew what was happening, just that they were taken,” she told me. “In the beginning, not understanding what’s happening, I thought the worst.”Later that day, Ms. Buteau learned that her parents and her aunt were among the eighteen people who had been arrested and accused of attempting a coup against Haiti’s president, Jovenel Moïse. Since that day, she’s been working around the clock with a lawyer in Haiti to try to get her parents out of prison.Were they plotting a coup or trying to restore democracy?Jake Johnston, a Haiti specialist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told me that the answer depends on when you think the president’s term is up. Opposition leaders say it ended on Feb. 7, four years after his inauguration in 2017. They were openly planning to swear in a parallel government to force him to relinquish power. But supporters of Mr. Moïse say he has another year left in his term, because a disputed election delayed him from taking office.“That’s what so much of this comes down to: legitimacy,” Mr. Johnston said.Some coups are obvious, like the recent military takeover in Myanmar. Others are murkier. What constitutes a coup d’état is all too often in the eye of the beholder.Coups are getting rarer, according to John Chin, a researcher at Carnegie Mellon University who tracks illegal power grabs. The 1960s saw dozens of coups around the world each year. More recently, there’s been only one or two a year. But accusations of coup plots have not gone away. Indeed, even the leaders of democracies — like Donald Trump in the United States and Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel — have cried coup to delegitimize opponents by portraying their conduct as illegal and undemocratic, Mr. Chin told me.The question of whether something is deemed a coup has practical implications. In 2009, when Honduran special forces escorted President Manuel Zelaya from his house in his pajamas at gunpoint and onto an airplane flight out of the country, the U.S. State Department refrained from calling it a “military coup,” because doing so would have meant cutting off aid to the Honduran military.And, in 2019, when Bolivia’s president Evo Morales, an icon of the left, was forced to flee to Mexico just weeks after he was declared the winner of a fourth term in office, U.S. officials rejected the term “coup” and called it an expression of “democratic will.”If a government is unpopular enough, its overthrow is called a revolution. Nowhere is this more obvious than in Haiti, a nation founded when enslaved and free people revolted against their French colonial masters, winning independence in 1804. Few historians would call that a coup.But popular revolts are easier to produce than popular governments. Haiti has endured a number of brutal dictators, notably François Duvalier, known as “Papa Doc,” in the 1950s and ’60s and his son, Jean-Claude Duvalier, “Baby Doc,” who ruled from 1971 to 1986. There were lots of plots to take out Papa Doc, who survived by relying on a dreaded militia, the Tontons Macoute. Haiti is an example of how failed coups, or even purported failed coups, can strengthen a leader’s hold on power by giving a pretext to crack down on opponents.Haiti didn’t have its first free democratic election until 1990, when Jean-Bertrand Aristide won in a landslide, only to be deposed twice in military coups. Once a country catches a case of the coups, it can be hard to cure. Every leader afterward is less secure.Ms. Buteau’s parents don’t seem like the coup-plotting type. They weren’t soldiers. Her father, Louis Buteau, is an agronomist who worked for years in Haiti’s Ministry of Agriculture. Her mother, Dr. Marie Antoinette Gautier, is a well-known surgeon at Hôpital Eliazar Germain who once opened a clinic inside their house for people in their neighborhood. Dr. Gautier also ran for president in 2015 as a long-shot candidate.“My mother, she is very vocal,” Ms. Buteau told me. Raised by a widowed nurse with seven children, Dr. Gautier went into medicine, while her sister, Marie Louise Gauthier, joined the national police.“These are people who have dedicated their lives to public service in Haiti,” Ms. Buteau said.Images from a petition to free Dr. Marie Antoinette Gautier, left, Marie Louise Gauthier and Louis Buteau.They sounded like the kind of educated and civic-minded Haitians who might throw up their hands at the political situation and emigrate to the United States or France or Canada. But Ms. Buteau’s parents didn’t want to leave Haiti.They stayed even when, a few years ago, Mr. Buteau was shot by robbers outside a bank, and then a wave of kidnappings washed over the country, snapping up a distant cousin for ransom. Still, the last time Ms. Buteau talked to her parents, they were on edge because of the deteriorating political situation. The last year has been marked by increasing protests against the president, who has ruled by decree since he dissolved Parliament in January 2020.Whatever legitimacy Mr. Moïse enjoys stems from his 2016 election. But political legitimacy gets murky when large numbers of people have been kicked off the voter rolls and when elections have a reputation for being rigged.Only about 20 percent of Haitians turned out in the election that brought Mr. Moïse to power. Merely holding elections isn’t enough — the public must perceive the vote to be free and fair for the winner to carry moral force. That’s a warning for the United States, where Republicans are busy trying to toss people off the voter rolls, and where some Democrats feel it’s futile to try to convince Trump supporters that President Biden won fairly.The question of when the president’s term ends should have been answered by a constitutional court. But the justice system in Haiti isn’t functioning as it should, thanks to the president. So Mr. Moïse has been planning another year in office, even rolling out plans for a nakedly unconstitutional referendum in April that would strengthen his grip on power. While a consensus has formed in Haiti that some political reforms are necessary to prevent cyclical deadlock, the current Constitution specifically forbids amendments by referendum.After the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, Americans no longer have much credibility to lecture other countries about elections, if we ever had it to begin with. In the past, Americans overtly meddled in Haiti’s politics, in ways that didn’t produce good long-term results. It isn’t our place to resolve the crisis in Haiti.Nor should U.S. tax dollars pay for Mr. Moïse’s unconstitutional referendum. And Haiti’s leaders should not be allowed to park their money in U.S. banks if there is reason to believe it was pilfered in corrupt schemes or garnered through kidnapping rings involving state security forces. That’s what the Magnitsky Act is for.Many people in Haiti believe that the Trump administration made a deal with Mr. Moïse: If he supported the U.S. case against Venezuela, then Washington would look the other way when it came to human rights abuses in Haiti. But things have gotten so bad there that even the Trump administration couldn’t stay silent. In December, the Treasury Department issued sanctions on two former officials in Mr. Moïse’s government and a notorious gang leader for their alleged role in a 2018 massacre in which at least 71 Haitians were killed, reportedly for refusing to side with the president against the opposition.More must be done to hold those who committed atrocities accountable. It’s hard to imagine free and fair elections in Haiti as long as such killers walk free. Still, the State Department initially supported Mr. Moïse’s view that he has another year in office, a declaration that some feel gave him the confidence to arrest Ms. Buteau’s relatives, although a spokesman also called on him to adhere to the spirit of the Constitution. Other voices inside the U.S. government have spoken up forcefully about the situation in Haiti.Mr. Moïse’s government put out a videotape showing “proof” of a coup, which featured a recording of a conversation between Ms. Buteau’s aunt, the national police’s inspector general, and the head of security at the presidential palace. The government says the tapes prove that Ms. Buteau’s aunt tried to bribe the security chief into arresting Mr. Moïse so that a new provisional president — a Supreme Court judge who was also arrested — could be sworn in.Was this really proof of a coup? Not likely. The video named the coup’s mastermind as Dan Whitman, an American who served as the U.S. Embassy spokesman in Haiti 20 years ago. Reached at his home in Washington, Mr. Whitman told me the allegation “couldn’t be more bizarre and more untrue.”Mr. Whitman, who retired from the State Department in 2009, told me he hasn’t been to Haiti in two decades. He had lost track of what was happening there until a Haitian radio journalist called him to ask for a comment about the purported plot. He has since heard a rumor that someone impersonating him has been calling up opposition figures in Haiti and giving orders that paved the way for the Feb. 7 arrests.“I’m disgusted,” he told me. “I’m creeped out. But I’m not surprised. This kind of thing happens all the time in small, vulnerable countries.”The Biden administration must find ways to speak up for fair elections in Haiti without trying to decide the outcome. In a draft of letter to Congress, Frantz G. Verret, former president of Haiti’s electoral commission, asked for help convening a meeting between the opposition and the president. He likened it to “roadside assistance” to get Haiti’s democracy moving again.That’s the sort of help that would be proper for the United States to provide. After all, it is the people of Haiti who must decide if their president is legitimate or not, and if the foiled coup in Haiti was really a coup at all.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More

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      In Myanmar Coup, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Ends as Neither Democracy Hero nor Military Foil

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }Coup in MyanmarDaw Aung San Suu Kyi Is DetainedWhat We KnowPhotosWho Is Aung San Suu Kyi?AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyDemocracy Hero? Military Foil? Myanmar’s Leader Ends Up as NeitherThe army’s detention of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi brought an abrupt end to the theory that she might strike a workable balance between civilian and military power.A demonstration outside Myanmar’s embassy in Bangkok on Monday against the detainment of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.Credit…Adam Dean for The New York TimesFeb. 1, 2021Updated 7:20 p.m. ETIn the years Myanmar was cowed by a military junta, people would tuck away secret photos of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, talismans of the heroine of democracy who would save her country from a fearsome army even though she was under house arrest.But after she and her party won historic elections in 2015 and again last year by a landslide — cementing civilian government and her own popularity within Myanmar — Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi came to be viewed by the outside world as something altogether different: a fallen patron saint who had made a Faustian pact with the generals and no longer deserved her Nobel Peace Prize.In the end, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, 75, could not protect her people, nor could she placate the generals. On Monday, the military, which had ruled the country for nearly five decades, seized power again in a coup, cutting short the governance of her National League for Democracy after just five years.Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi was detained in a pre-dawn raid, along with her top ministers and a slew of pro-democracy figures. The rounding up of critics of the military continued into Monday night, and the nation’s telecommunications networks suffered constant interruptions.Across the country, government billboards still carried her image and that of her party’s fighting peacock. But the army, under commander in chief Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, was back in charge.The disappearance of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who represented two entirely different archetypes to two different audiences, domestic and foreign, proved her inability to do what so many expected: form a political equipoise with the military with whom she shared power.Hundreds of police officers were deployed across Yangon, the country’s largest city and commercial capital.Credit…The New York TimesBy allowing negotiations with General Min Aung Hlaing to wither, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi had lost the military’s ear. And by defending the generals in their ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, she lost the trust of an international community that had championed her for decades.“Aung San Suu Kyi rebuffed international critics by claiming she was not a human-rights activist but rather a politician. But the sad part is she hasn’t been very good at either,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “She failed a great moral test by covering up the military’s atrocities against the Rohingya. But the détente with the military never materialized, and her landslide election victory is now undone by a coup.”President Biden, in the first test of his reaction to a coup intended to upend a democratic election, issued a strongly worded statement that seemed designed to differentiate himself from the way his predecessor dealt with human rights issues.“In a democracy, force should never seek to overrule the will of the people or attempt to erase the outcome of a credible election,” he said, using language similar to what he said after the Jan. 6 siege on the U.S. Capitol that sought to overturn his own election. He called on nations to “come together in one voice” to press Myanmar’s military to immediately relinquish power.“The United States is taking note of those who stand with the people of Burma in this difficult hour,” he added, using the former name for Myanmar as it is still used by the U.S. government. More