PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — As the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez has been keeping a close eye on the situation in Myanmar.
Myanmar’s military staged a coup on Monday and detained senior politicians, including President Win Myint and de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
Military leaders said they would be in charge of the country for one year. They said the seizure was necessary because the government had not acted on the military’s claims of fraud in November’s elections, in which Suu Kyi’s ruling party won a majority of the parliamentary seats up for grabs.
“The Burmese military seizure of power, their arrest of actors and officials, the shutdown of all telecommunications is an affront to the international community,” said Menendez. “We have to send a strong and unified condemnation of the military coup.”
He said U.S. President Joe Biden is considering sanctions and other forms of leverage to stop it, but that won’t be easy.
The military power grab poses a challenge for the two-week-old Biden administration, which wants both to support wobbly democracy movements globally but to avoid driving countries like Myanmar toward China.
“They’re saying to themselves, ‘Well, the west and other democratic countries within the region are going to protest, but at the end of the day they will not do much and China can cover us.’ The problem with that is China extends its influence in a way that is not in the interest and security of the United States,” Menendez explained.
And with Myanmar’s military leaders already under U.S. sanctions over the brutal campaign against the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority, it was unclear how much additional impact any new penalties would have.
A State Department official said there was no evidence of widespread fraud in Myanmar’s latest elections. The United States believed the military’s real impetus for grabbing back power was to prevent the elected parliament from meeting as scheduled on Monday, the official said.
The White House has requested $109 million in aid for Myanmar for 2021.
Menendez said the Biden administration is working to deliver consequences through an international coalition over the next couple of days.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.