Myanmar’s junta has extended a state of emergency by six months, four years after it seized power triggering a civil war that has claimed thousands of lives.
The junta’s information team said this to newsmen this Friday, saying that the ruling military council headed by army chief, Aung Hlaing as well as all members of National Defence and Security Council decided in unison to the extension of the state of emergency for another six months.
Min Aung Hlaing told the ruling council that “peace and stability is still needed” before the state of emergency can be lifted and polls held.
The junta’s media says the extension is in preparation for elections it will hold this year, as Myanmar enters its fifth year of crisis.
Meanwhile, the elections which the junta had said will be held in 2025 will not take place until the second half of the year at the earliest.
Currently, Myanmar is in a bloody, multi-sided conflict stemming from the February 1, 2021 coup that ended a 10-year experiment with democracy.
The military is struggling to contain armed resistance to its rule, suffering a series of damaging battlefield losses over the past year to an alliance of ethnic minority armed groups in the north and west of the country.
Recall that the military seized power after making unsubstantiated allegations of fraud in the 2020 elections, which Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won in a landslide.