The legal team of jailed Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi plans to meet with her this weekend after she was transferred to house arrest in the capital Naypyidaw by the military-backed administration, a representative said on Friday.
Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has been detained since the military ousted her civilian government in a coup in February 2021. The coup triggered a deadly civil war that has engulfed much of the impoverished Southeast Asian nation, and her whereabouts had been unclear.
“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is currently still in Naypyidaw,” a member of her legal team told Reuters, using an honorific for the veteran politician, and confirming that she had been moved to house arrest on April 30.
Regime media reported she would be moved to house arrest, but did not say where. It also broadcast a photograph of Aung San Suu Kyi, seated on a wooden bench with two uniformed personnel, the first public image of her in years.
Suu Kyi’s legal team planned to meet the 80-year-old on Sunday to discuss her position and bring her some supplies.
“The situation has shifted. I think it will no longer be just a standard prison visit, but rather a meeting where the legal team will go and discuss matters with her,” the legal representative said.
After a marathon run of secret trials following the 2021 coup, Suu Kyi was sentenced to 33 years after she was convicted of charges ranging from corruption and inciting election fraud to violating state secrecy rules.
Her allies maintain the charges were politically motivated and aimed at sidelining her.
The sentence was later reduced to 27 years, and then by a sixth in a Myanmar New Year amnesty on April 17 that freed her ally and co-defendant President Win Myint.
Her sentence was reduced by a further one-sixth on April 30 as part of a wider amnesty of prisoners in Myanmar’s jails, before the move to house arrest was announced.
Min Aung Hlaing, who led the coup and was inaugurated as Myanmar’s president on April 10, has faced persistent international pressure to release political detainees since a recent election, including from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
He is seeking to reengage with the 11-member ASEAN regional bloc after it banned Myanmar’s senior generals from its summits as a result of the coup.
Suu Kyi, the daughter of the country’s independence hero General Aung San, was held under house arrest for a total of 15 years under a previous junta at her family residence on Yangon’s Inya Lake, where she famously gave impassioned speeches to crowds of supporters over the metal gates of the property.
REUTERS
