YANGON (TIP): Myanmar civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was ousted in a 2021 military coup, has been moved from prison to a government building, an official from her party said on July 28. Suu Kyi has only been seen once since she was held after the February 1, 2021 putsch — in grainy state media photos from a bare courtroom in the military-built capital Naypyidaw.
The coup plunged the Southeast Asian nation into a conflict that has displaced more than one million people, according to the United Nations.
“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been moved to a high-level venue compound on Monday night,” an official from the National League for Democracy told AFP Friday on condition of anonymity.
The party official also confirmed Suu Kyi had met the country’s lower house speaker Ti Khun Myat and was likely to meet Deng Xijuan, China‘s special envoy for Asian Affairs, who is visiting the country.
A source from another political party said Suu Kyi had been moved to a VIP compound in Naypyidaw.
In July, Thailand’s foreign minister said he had met with Suu Kyi, the first-known meeting with a foreign envoy since she was detained. A junta spokesman told AFP the meeting had lasted more than one hour but did not give details on what was discussed. There have been concerns about the 78-year-old Nobel laureate’s health since her detention, including during her trial in a junta court that required her to attend almost daily hearings.
Suu Kyi has been sentenced to 33 years in jail for a clutch of charges, including corruption, possession of illegal walkie-talkies and flouting coronavirus restrictions. Rights groups slammed her trial as a sham designed to remove the popular leader from politics. In June 2022, after more than a year under house arrest in Naypyidaw, Suu Kyi was moved to a prison compound in another part of the capital. There she was no longer permitted to her domestic staff of around ten people and assigned military-chosen helpers, sources told AFP at the time.
Confinement in the isolated capital is a far cry from the years Suu Kyi spent under house arrest during a previous junta, where she became a world-famous democracy figurehead. During that period, she lived at her family’s colonial-era lakeside mansion in commercial hub Yangon and regularly gave speeches to crowds on the other side of her garden wall. (AFP)