Ousted Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi was on Wednesday moved from house arrest to solitary confinement in a prison compound in the military-built capital Naypyidaw, a junta spokesman said yesterday.
Since her ouster in a coup last year, Aung San Suu Kyi had been under house arrest at an undisclosed location in Naypyidaw, accompanied by several domestic staff and her dog, sources with knowledge of the matter said.
The 77-year-old Nobel laureate left those premises only to attend hearings for her numerous trials in a junta court that could see her handed a prison sentence of more than 150 years.
Photo: AFP
She was transferred from house arrest to “solitary confinement in prison,” Burmese Deputy Minister of Information Major General Zaw Min Tun said in a statement.
Her trial hearings are to take place inside a newly built courtroom within the prison compound, he added.
A source with knowledge of the case said that Aung San Suu Kyi’s domestic staff and her dog had not accompanied her when she was moved on Wednesday, and that security around the prison compound was “tighter than before.”
“Aung San Suu Kyi is in good health as far as we know,” the source added, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Since seizing power, Myanmar’s military government has detained thousands of pro-democracy protesters, with many facing secret trials that rights groups have decried as politically motivated.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s lawyers have been banned from speaking to the media, with journalists barred from her trial and the junta rebuffing requests by foreign diplomats to meet her.
“For the sake of the country and people, she [Aung San Suu Kyi] has sacrificed everything, but the wicked people are ungrateful and cruel,” one social media user posted on Facebook following yesterday’s announcement.
“What we are seeing is the Myanmar junta moving towards a much more punitive phase, towards Aung San Suu Kyi,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “They are obviously trying to intimidate her and her supporters.”
Under a previous junta regime, Aung San Suu Kyi spent long spells under house arrest in her family mansion in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city.
In 2009, she spent around three months in Yangon’s Insein Prison, while she went on trial after being accused of harboring an American man who swam across a lake to visit her while she was under house arrest.
Under the current regime, she has already been convicted of corruption, incitement against the military, breaching COVID-19 rules and contravening a telecommunications law, with a court sentencing her to 11 years so far.
She on Sunday turned 77 and brought a birthday cake to court to eat with her lawyers ahead of a hearing on Monday, a source with knowledge of the matter said.
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