The son of ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has issued a stark warning about her deteriorating health, urging the ruling military junta to grant her access to urgent medical care and calling on the international community to intervene.
Kim Aris told The Independent his 80-year-old mother – who has been imprisoned since the military coup in February 2021 – has been suffering from a worsening heart condition.
“It is deeply distressing to have heard my mother’s health has taken a turn for the worse,” he said. “She has had ongoing heart complications, which have undoubtedly been exacerbated by the conditions under which she is being held and needs to see, and has asked to see a cardiologist from outside the prison. I have no way of knowing if this has been granted.”
In a dramatic intervention, former UK foreign secretary William Hague called on the military junta to release Ms Suu Kyi. He told The Independent: “It is high time that Aung Sang Suu Kyi was released. It is also a moral and humanitarian imperative that she is given access to proper medical care without delay.”
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. Her imprisonment is the subject of an Independent TV documentary, Cancelled: The Rise and Fall of Aung San Suu Kyi.
Last year, three former UK foreign secretaries united to demand Ms Suu Kyi’s release, saying she was being held in “terrible conditions” on trumped-up charges and must be released.
Her son condemned the ruling State Administration Council’s treatment of her as “cruel and life-threatening,” and said the lack of transparency and compassion shown was “shocking and shattering”.
He has appealed to the global community to help secure his mother’s release, emphasising the urgency of her condition and the injustice of her continued imprisonment.
“She is aged 80 and needs care. Most importantly [she] needs to be freed and no longer a political prisoner for standing up for democracy and freedom for her country.
“I ask the world to help me find a path to freedom for her.”
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 which international rights groups have widely condemned as a sham.
Following her sentencing, Amnesty International said the military junta had “turned the courts and prison system into a human rights inferno”.
Australian economist Sean Turnell, who served as Ms Suu Kyi’s economics adviser and who was also imprisoned shortly after the coup, told The Independent last year that conditions inside the Myanmar prisons were dire, with no protection from extreme heat or monsoon rains, while food quality was terrible and disease rife.
“She has a number of underlying health conditions that she has to deal with. The conditions that she’s being held under are quite awful,” he said.
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