Myanmar’s ruling military junta tightens its siege against former ruler Aung San Suu Kyi. Already sentenced to 11 years in prison, she was sentenced on Monday to an additional six years in prison, in a trial denounced as political by the international community and an “affront to justice” by Washington.
The 77-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner was found guilty on four counts of corruption.
Suu Kyi appeared before the military court in apparent good health, according to a source close to the case, and did not comment after the verdict was read.
Since being detained on February 1, 2021 after a military coup that ended a decade of democratic rule in the country, the former ruler has remained imprisoned in a secret location in Naipyidaw, the capital of Myanmar.
The process, which began a year ago and takes place behind closed doors, will continue at the place where Suu Kyi is being held. Her lawyers advised her not to speak to the press and international organizations.
The dictatorship accuses the former ruler of several infractions, such as violation of a law on state secrets, fraud in the 2020 elections – won by her party –, sedition and corruption.
She could be sentenced to several decades in prison at the end of her trial.
US says conviction is ‘an affront’
The US government reacted to the new conviction, which it called “an affront to justice”.
“Myanmar’s unjust detention, conviction and sentencing of the Nobel Peace Prize” by the military regime “is an affront to justice and the rule of law,” a State Department spokesperson said.
Daughter of Myanmar’s independence hero and winner of the 2015 and 2020 elections, Suu Kyi has spent 15 years under house arrest during the previous military dictatorship.
She remains a very popular figure in the country, even though her international image was affected by the army’s persecution of the Muslim Rohingya minority in 2016 and 2017 – a “genocide” according to the US government.
The military junta took power alleging alleged fraud in the 2020 elections, handily won by Suu Kyi’s party. Since the coup, more than 2,100 civilians have died in violent actions and more than 15,000 are in detention, according to a local NGO.
The Myanmar Army defends its project to organize elections in 2023, something that Washington has already rejected and qualified as “simulation”.
