Myanmar sentenced the country’s former ruler, Aung San Suu Kyi, to three more years in prison with forced labor on Friday, according to a source who followed the process. With that, the Nobel Peace Prize, who is 77 years old, accumulates a sentence of 20 years. She denies all charges.
A leader of the opposition to the regime for decades, Suu Kyi was detained after a new coup by the army last year. In this Friday’s trial (2), she was found guilty of fraud in the November 2020 general elections, when her party – the National League for Democracy – won the election for the Legislative with an overwhelming majority, slaughtering the legend created by the military.
The source, who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the press, said this was the first time that a sentence given to Suu Kyi had included forced labour, and that it was not known what that meant. Defendant in the same case, the deposed president, Win Myint, received an equivalent sentence.
The military junta that has ruled the country since the coup did not respond to the report’s request for comment. She has stated on previous occasions that the Nobel Peace Prize faces a fair process.
Former prisoners describe conditions in certain prisons in Myanmar as particularly harsh, and in recent years, press reports have claimed that some prisons make use of handcuffs and forced quarry labor.
Still, an official with the Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners, a group of activists that tracks detentions, said he did not expect a political prisoner as targeted as Suu Kyi to be exposed to extreme work — not least because that would mean having contact with other prisoners, which that could lead to uprisings.
He adds that there are laws governing Myanmar’s prisons that recommend that the elderly and those in frail health be spared this kind of effort.
Since last year’s coup, Suu Kyi has been on trial for more than a dozen crimes — charges some say are aimed at ensuring she never returns to political activity.
The former civilian leader’s party formed a government after the 2015 elections, but was forced to share power with the army. Until the military – which ruled the country from the 1960s to 2010 – abruptly ended the opening process a year ago. Since then, the economy has collapsed and there are regular power cuts and restrictions on internet access.
In June, Suu Kyi was transferred to a solitary cell in a jail in the country’s capital, Naipidau, whose location is unknown.
A United Nations official recently asked the Myanmar regime to allow her to return home. The head of the military junta, Min Aung Hlaing, said last month that he would consider transferring her to house arrest, but only after all the verdicts in the cases in which she stands trial are announced.
