Aung San Suu Kyi’s son has said she “could be dead already”, warning that years of isolation and an information blackout under military detention have left him fearing the worst about Myanmar’s jailed former leader.
Kim Aris said no one has heard from his 80-year-old mother, who has been suffering an array of health issues in her old age, for two years. They have only been receiving secondhand details and updates on her health, he said.
Ms Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and longtime symbol of Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement, has been held in solitary confinement for much of her detention since her democratically elected government was overthrown in a military coup in 2021. Her imprisonment is the subject of a recent Independent TV documentary, Cancelled: The Rise and Fall of Aung San Suu Kyi.
In 2022, following a trial widely regarded as politically motivated, Ms Suu Kyi was sentenced to 33 years in prison on a series of charges that international rights groups have widely condemned as a sham.
Mr Aris, a British national who kept a low profile until a few years ago, was in Japan meeting with various politicians and government officials, as he called on foreign governments to press for the release of Ms Suu Kyi and take a stronger stance against Myanmar’s junta.
He told Reuters that he has received only fragmentary reports about her condition, and not even her legal team has been allowed to meet her in the last two years.
He led a protest outside Myanmar’s embassy in Tokyo with supporters demanding the release of Ms Suu Kyi. The demonstration was held to protest against the military junta’s plan to push ahead with the first phase of elections on 28 December, which critics said will be neither free nor fair and is an effort by the military to legitimise its rule after seizing power from the elected government of Ms Suu Kyi in February 2021.
“She’s got ongoing health issues. Nobody has seen her in over two years. She hasn’t been allowed contact with her legal team, never mind her family,” Mr Aris said. “For all I know, she could be dead already.”
Mr Aris has been sharply critical of the junta’s plans to stage elections later this month – polls widely dismissed by foreign governments as a facade designed to entrench military rule. Yet he acknowledged that the process might still create a narrow opportunity to push for some relief in his mother’s treatment.
“I imagine [Myanmar junta leader] Min Aung Hlaing has his own agenda when it comes to my mother. If he does want to use her to try and appease the general population before or after the elections by either releasing her or moving her to house arrest, then at least that would be something,” he added.
Mr Aris, who has been actively campaigning for her mother’s release, previously told The Independent that Ms Suu Kyi is suffering from a worsening heart condition and has asked to see a cardiologist from outside the prison.
He said she needed urgent medical attention in an appeal to release her from what he called “cruel and life-threatening” custody.
A spokesperson for the military told state media at the time that her health was “good”, calling reports about her health “fabrications”.
Ms Suu Kyi is believed to be held in solitary confinement in Naypyidaw, the capital. She has been detained by the military several times and spent some 15 years mainly under house arrest before the 2021 coup. Myanmar’s military is known for releasing prisoners in amnesty to mark national holidays and important events.
She was freed from earlier detention in 2010, just days after the elections. She had been arrested the previous year after an American visitor stayed at her home in Yangon, which the authorities treated as a violation of her previous house arrest terms.
Mr Aris said: “Because of the upcoming elections that the military are trying to stage, which we all know are completely unfair, and so far from being free that it would be laughable if it wasn’t so lamentable, I need to use this small window of opportunity.”
Ms Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar’s independence hero General Aung San, was elected to lead the country’s civilian government after her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won a landslide victory in the 2015 general election.
A major turning point in her political career came in 2017, when Myanmar’s military launched a brutal crackdown against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine state. Her global standing was severely damaged after she was widely criticised for failing to condemn the military and for defending Myanmar against allegations of genocide, including at the International Court of Justice in 2019.
Despite this, the NLD won another landslide victory in the November 2020 general election, further marginalising the military politically before the coup.
Mr Aris acknowledged that global attention had faded following his mother’s appearance at the international tribunal in The Hague, but insisted she was “not complicit” in what the UN described as a genocidal campaign by the military against the Rohingya in 2016-17.
“In the past, when my mother was held in higher regard by the international community, then it was much harder for people to ignore what’s happening in Burma. But since her position was undermined through the crisis in Rakhine, that’s no longer the case,” he added, using the country’s former name.
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