Jailed State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi’s son, Kim Aris, launched a new campaign on Monday called “Free Her,” which continues to demand the immediate release of his 81-year-old mother, a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, and one of the co-founders of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party. Aung San Suu Kyi has been held by the regime in Naypyidaw since she was first detained during the military coup on Feb. 1, 2021.
“I am not asking for special treatment. I am asking for something basic—the right to see and speak with my mother,” Aris wrote in a “Free Her” campaign press release on Sept. 7. “I lived with my mother’s detention when I was a child. I never imagined that decades later we would be here again. I simply want the chance to see my mother and spend time with her while we still can,” Aris added.
This latest campaign follows Aung San Suu Kyi’s meeting with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) at an undisclosed location in Myanmar on Aug. 3. Aris launched the “Proof of Life” campaign in April, which demanded independent verification that his mother was still alive, after news of her unverified transfer from Naypyidaw Prison to house arrest was first reported by regime media.
“The ICRC visit was an important development. The campaign now moves to the fundamental issues of family access, basic rights and freedom,” stated Aris, who added that the “Free Her” campaign also demands the rights and freedom for all those unjustly detained in Myanmar for opposing the 2021 coup. Aung San Suu Kyi is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence after multiple partial commutations, beginning in 2022.
Aris calls on the international community, the United Nations (UN), and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to demand Aung San Suu Kyi be released from unjust detention and isolation from her family.
Aung San Suu Kyi was first placed under house arrest at her family home at 54 University Avenue in Yangon in 1989, after nationwide pro-democracy protests, which have come to be known as the ‘8888 Uprising’ due to the date they began on Aug. 8, 1988.
She was released by the Myanmar military in 1995, but was placed under house arrest again from 2000 to 2010 when she was released and allowed to contest a 2011 by-election, which gained her a seat in Myanmar’s parliament and paved the way for back-to-back landslide election victories in 2015 and 2020 for her NLD party.
Both elections were considered “free and fair” by international observers, who boycotted the regime’s 2025-2026 elections that ended on Jan. 25. The NLD party was dissolved by the regime’s Union Election Commission (UEC) in 2023 for not re-registering despite the fact that all of the party’s senior leaders have been jailed or forced underground or into exile to avoid arrest by regime authorities.
DVB has documented that Aung San Suu Kyi has spent nearly 20 years—one quarter of her life—in military detention in Myanmar. Check out our infographic on DVB English News Facebook.
