13 Myanmar Junta Officials Have U.S. Assets Frozen Via Government Sanctions
Thirteen senior members of Myanmar's military were placed on a financial blacklist by the U.S. on Monday for its acts of brutality against civilians following the country's February coup.
The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control announced it imposed sanctions on 16 people total, three of them being adult children of three senior military officials previously designated for U.S. sanctions. Myanmar's newly created State Administration Council is also under sanctions.
The designation freezes assets within a U.S. jurisdiction and bans those within a U.S. jurisdiction from performing financial transactions with those listed. The thirteen senior members on the list are part of the military's effort to suppress opposition, which has killed hundreds of people, including children, since February.
For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.
The Treasury said in a statement announcing the new sanctions that the Myanmar military is responsible for deadly attacks on civilians and the State Administration Council was created by the armed forces "to support the unlawful overthrow of the democratically elected civilian government."
It designated four members of the council as well as senior members of the military junta, including the governor of the central bank, the minister of international cooperation and the commerce minister.
The military on Feb. 1 arrested Aung San Suu Kyi, whose National League for Democracy party won a landslide victory in the Nov. 8 polls and should have secured a second five-year term in office. The U.S. has imposed several rounds of sanctions in response.
The military, which ran the country also known as Burma for more than 50 years until 2015, then prevented elected lawmakers from convening a new session of Parliament and declared a state of emergency and said it would run the country until new elections were held. Security forces have killed hundreds of people, including bystanders, as it attempts to suppress protests and opposition.
