In Burma, the junta improves the conditions of detention of Aung San Suu Kyi and releases more than 3,000 prisoners

Imprisoned since the 2021 coup d’état led by the army, the former head of the Burmese government, Aung San Suu Kyi, was taken out of her cell and transferred to a house, an official Source announced on Wednesday April 17. Agence France-Presse (AFP).

She did not specify whether it was placement under house arrest or a reduction in her sentence, but according to the junta’s spokesperson, Zaw Min Tun, the Nobel Peace Prize winner , 78 years old, must “receive care due to the heatwave”. An army Source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said former President Win Myint also benefited from the measure.

Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said a heatwave had prompted authorities to take measures to protect vulnerable detainees. “Not only Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and U Win Myint, but also elderly prisoners received the necessary care due to the extreme heat”, explained Zaw Min Tun to AFP. The junta also announced Wednesday, in a press release, the amnesty of 3,300 prisoners on the occasion of the Burmese New Year. The other prisoners benefit from a reduction of one-sixth of their sentence, except those convicted of murder, terrorism and drug trafficking, the press release specifies.

Aung San Suu Kyi remains popular in Burma

Aung San Suu Kyi, aged 78 and Nobel Prize winner in 1991, was sentenced to thirty-three years in prison in December 2022 following a judicial sham for a series of criminal convictions ranging from corruption to non-compliance with Covid restrictions. But the former leader had benefited from a partial pardon by General Min Aung Hlaing, head of the junta in August 2023, reducing her sentence to twenty-seven years in prison.

She had been largely hidden from the public eye since her arrest by the military during their 2021 coup takeover, seen only once in grainy state media photos taken in a courtroom in Naypyidaw. But his state of health has raised concerns since his arrest.

Her son Kim Aris told AFP in February that she was still being held in a prison complex in Naypyidaw, the military-built capital. A complex that did not have an air conditioning system during periods of heat, with concrete walls that oozed water during the monsoon, described to AFP last year Sean Turnell, incarcerated there for several months .

The confinement in this isolated capital contrasts sharply with the years Aung San Suu Kyi spent under house arrest under the previous junta, where she became a world-famous democratic figurehead.

During this period, she had lived in the family’s colonial-era mansion in central Yangon, having become known during large protests against the then junta in 1988. Aung San Suu Kyi remains very popular in Burma, even though its international image has been tarnished by its power-sharing agreement with the generals and its inability to defend the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority.