Myanmar’s Suu Kyi: Prisoner of generals with 33 years in prison
Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has racked up a total of 33 years in jail as her trials in a junta-controlled court come to a close, with the country’s military once again transforming the democracy figurehead into a political prisoner.
The Nobel laureate, 77, has been detained since a coup ousted her government in February 2021, ending Myanmar’s brief democratic experiment and sparking huge protests.
Months before, her National League for Democracy (NLD) party swept nationwide elections and she had been preparing for another five-year term as the nation’s de facto leader.
The daughter of an independence hero, Suu Kyi had already spent nearly two decades under house arrest during a former military regime.
On Friday, a junta court jailed Suu Kyi for seven years for corruption, the latest in a clutch of convictions on charges that included illegally importing walkie-talkies, breaching Covid-19 regulations and violating the official secrets act.
While Suu Kyi remains immensely popular in Myanmar, her legacy abroad was deeply tarnished by her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis.
There was global revulsion at a 2017 army crackdown that forced roughly 750,000 members of the Rohingya minority to flee their burning villages to neighbouring Bangladesh.
And for many fighting for democracy in Myanmar, the revolution must now go beyond the movement Suu Kyi led decades ago to permanently root out the military’s dominance of politics and the economy.
Daughter of a hero
Suu Kyi was born on June 19, 1945, in Japanese-occupied Yangon during the final weeks of World War II.
Her father, Aung San, fought for and against both the British and the Japanese colonisers as he jostled to give his country the best shot at independence, achieved in 1948.
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Suu Kyi spent most of her early years outside Myanmar — first in India, where her mother was an ambassador, and later at Oxford University, where she met her British husband.
After General Ne Win seized full power in 1962, he forced his brand of socialism on Myanmar, turning what was once Asia’s rice bowl into one of the world’s poorest and most isolated countries.
Suu Kyi’s elevation to a democracy champion happened almost by accident when she returned home in 1988 to nurse her dying mother.
Soon afterwards, at least 3,000 people were killed when the military crushed protests against its authoritarian rule.
The bloodshed was the catalyst for Suu Kyi.
A charismatic orator, the then-43-year-old found herself helming a burgeoning democracy movement, delivering speeches to huge crowds before leading the NLD to a landslide 1990 election victory.
The generals were not prepared to give up power. Ignoring the result of the vote, they confined Suu Kyi to her Yangon home, where she lived for around 15 of the next 20 years.
She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while detained in 1991.
The junta offered to end her imprisonment at any time if she left the country permanently, but Suu Kyi refused.
That decision meant not seeing her husband before his death from cancer in 1999 and missing her two sons growing up.
Troubled relationship
The military eventually granted her freedom in 2010, just days after elections that her party boycotted, but which brought in a nominally civilian government.
She swept the next poll five years later, prompting jubilant celebrations by massive crowds. The vote in 2020 increased her party’s majority, but the military claimed fraud had marred the polls.
During Suu Kyi’s tenure, her administration was beset with trouble and marked by an uneasy relationship with the military, which maintained a powerful political role.
The government and the military appeared in lockstep after the 2017 Rohingya crackdown, however.
Her office denied claims that fleeing refugees had suffered rape, extrajudicial killings and arson attacks on their homes by Myanmar troops.
She personally defended the army’s conduct, even travelling to The Hague in 2019 to rebut charges of genocide at the UN’s top court.
Just over a year later, she was the military’s prisoner again and she now faces the possibility of spending the rest of her life in detention.
