Six more years in prison for Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma

First modification: 08/15/2022 – 15:00Last modification: 08/15/2022 – 14:58

The 77-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate was found guilty on four counts of corruption.

Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in apparent good health before the military court, according to a source close to the case, and did not comment after the verdict was read.

Since she was arrested on February 1, 2021 after the military coup, the former leader has been arrested and isolated in a secret place in Naypyidaw, the capital of Burma, since the end of June. The coup had ended a decade of democratic transition in Burma

Her process, which began more than a year ago and is being carried out behind closed doors, will continue in the center where she is detained. Suu Kyi’s lawyers are prohibited from speaking to the press and international organizations.

She is indicted for multiple infractions by the board in power, including for having repeatedly violated a law on state secrets, for electoral fraud in the 2020 elections -which her party won-, sedition or corruption, among other charges.

The Nobel laureate could be sentenced to decades in prison at the end of her mega-trial

USA: “affront to justice”

The United States reacted on Monday to the new conviction against Suu Kyi, calling it an “affront to justice.”

“The military regime’s unjust arrest, conviction and sentence” of Burma against the Nobel Peace Prize laureate “is an affront to justice and the rule of law,” said a State Department spokesman.

For his part, political analyst David Mathieson told AFP: “Oblivious to the national and international outrage, the trials to punish Suu Kyi and her entourage are aimed at erasing the democratic past” of Burma.

Several voices have denounced a judicial cruelty motivated by political considerations, and ending the daughter of the hero of independence and great winner of the 2015 and 2020 elections

Aung San Suu Kyi remains a very popular figure in Burma, although her international image has been tarnished by her failure to defend the Muslim minority from the Rohingya, victims of persecution and abuse by the army in 2016 and 2017, a “genocide”. according to the United States.

Several opponents of the military regime believe that the fight must go beyond the future of the Nobel Prize, to end the military regime. Thousands of them have taken up arms against the junta in various regions of Burma, contrary to the principle of non-violence advocated by Aung San Suu Kyi.

“Simulacrum”

For its part, the army in power defends its project of organizing elections in the summer of 2023. The United States has already rejected this “simulation” of elections that can be “neither free nor fair under current conditions” according to the Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

The junta seized power citing alleged fraud in the 2020 election, won overwhelmingly by Aung San Suu Kyi’s party. Since the coup, more than 2,100 civilians have died violently and more than 15,000 are detained, according to a local NGO.