Thai Minister of Foreign Affairs Don Pramudwinai yesterday said he had met with ousted Burmese state counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi last week and she was in good health in her first known meeting with a foreign envoy since she was detained following a 2021 coup.
Aung San Suu Kyi has been seen only once since she was held after the Feb.1, 2021, putsch — in grainy state media photographs from a bare courtroom in the military-built capital, Naypyidaw.
“There was a meeting, she was in good health and it was a good meeting,” Don told reporters on the sidelines of an meeting of Southeast Asian foreign ministers in the Indonesian capital, Jakarta.
Photo: AFP
The coup that overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi ended Myanmar’s brief democratic experiment and plunged the Southeast Asian nation into bloody turmoil.
The Nobel laureate, 78, was later hit with a raft of charges and jailed by a junta court for a total of 33 years in trials that rights groups slammed as a sham.
Don said that he met with Aung San Suu Kyi on Sunday, and she had called for renewed talks to end the crisis.
“She encouraged dialogue,” Don said.
The meeting was private and lasted “over one hour,” a Thai Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said.
Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Enrique Manalo said Don briefed ASEAN ministers on his meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi, but reiterated that any independent effort to restart the peace process should be in line with a five-point ASEAN plan agreed two years ago with Myanmar’s junta.
“We feel any initiative should be consistent with the five-point consensus. He [Don] just reported on that,” Manalo told reporters.
The junta has rebuffed repeated requests by foreign diplomats to meet Aung San Suu Kyi and her lawyers were barred from speaking to the media for much of her trial. She was transferred from house arrest in Naypyidaw to solitary confinement in prison in June last year.
Manalo said it was “good to hear” that Aung San Suu Kyi was in good health, because “she used to attend our meetings.”
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