Myanmar’s ousted leader Suu Kyi moved to prison, says junta

ISTANBUL

The military regime in Myanmar has moved incarcerated leader Aung San Suu Kyi to prison and placed her in solitary confinement, a junta spokesperson said on Thursday.

“She is being treated well in solitary confinement,” junta spokesperson Zaw Min Tun said in a statement.

After her ouster in a military coup in February last year, Suu Kyi was under house arrest until April this year when she was shifted to an unknown place. She is fighting over a dozen charges, including corruption for which she was sentenced to five years in prison in April.

Suu Kyi, 77, has spent around 15 years under house arrest during different junta regimes in the Buddhist-majority nation.

While Tun did not identify the prison, The Irrawaddy news website reported that Suu Kyi was shifted to Naypyitaw Prison in Myanmar’s capital.

Meanwhile, the junta regime has turned down a request from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to “resume its prison visits and other humanitarian activities and allow family visits.”

The request was made by the ICRC regional director for Asia-Pacific, Christine Cipolla, when she visited Myanmar between June 15-18.

It is the second time since 2009 that Suu Kyi has been held in prison. Earlier that year, the then-junta regime had shifted her to Yangon’s Insein Prison for four months for “violating the rules of her house arrest.”

Since last December, the Nobel laureate has been sentenced to at least 11 years in jail in multiple cases.

The ruling on 11 other charges is pending.

Suu Kyi’s government was deposed in a military coup last year after it swept the November 2020 nationwide elections.

The coup was met by mass civil unrest as people protested Suu Kyi’s ouster and the restoration of military rule. The junta cracked down violently on protests as the UN repeatedly warned the country had descended into a civil war.

The junta forces have since killed more than 1,500 people in a crackdown on dissent, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a local monitoring group.