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With the sentence of this Friday, December 30, 33 years in prison are added for the Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, overthrown in the military coup of February 1, 2021. A court of the military junta that governs Myanmar ruled another 7 years prison sentence against her after convicting her of corruption charges, after a series of legal proceedings with political overtones since the Army removed her from office and imprisoned other members of her government.
Myanmar’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi would not return to freedom for as long as she lives.
The 77-year-old woman was sentenced on December 30 to another seven years in prison. The sentence added to previous rulings against him brings together a total of 33 years in detention.
In the case that concluded this Friday, after an 18-month trial, the leader was accused of five crimes under the corruption law.
The court, controlled by the military that ousted her, alleged that Suu Kyi abused her position and caused a loss of state funds by failing to follow financial rules and granting Win Myat Aye, deposed cabinet chairman, permission to hire, buy and keep a helicopter
Aung San Suu Kyi “was hit with a total of 19 charges—more than any other detainee of the” Myanmar board. “She was found guilty of all the trumped-up charges against her de ella during her closed-door trials before a junta court, which lasted for 18 months.”https://t.co/FxlHqSi7Bo
—Kenneth Roth (@KenRoth) December 30, 2022
Among the other sentences against him are accusations for the “illegal” importation and possession of walkie-talkies, violation of the restrictions by Covid-19, violation of the country’s official secrets law, sedition and electoral fraud.
Suu Kyi has pleaded not guilty to all the charges, which she has described as “absurd”.
“Due process and a fair trial were never possible”
The charges and sentences against Suu Kyi have been considered by human rights organizations as a strategy to keep her at bay from the political spectrum.
Western governments and human rights organizations stress that the numerous charges against the leader seek to legitimize the coup with which she was removed from office on February 1, 2021 and avoid her influence in the face of the elections that, according to the promises of the military junta, would take place in 2023. All in the midst of the general rejection of the population against the military institution.
Human Rights Watch said the latest ruling by the military junta amounts to life in prison, given the age of the former Nobel Peace Prize winner for her decades-long campaign for democracy in Myanmar.
“The ridiculous and totally unfair parade of charges and convictions by the Myanmar junta against Aung San Suu Kyi amounts to a politically motivated punishment designed to keep her behind bars for the rest of her life,” said Phil Robertson, deputy director for Asia at Human Rights Watch.
The organization’s representative also called the trials a sham and called for a stronger international response and more effective sanctions against the Burmese junta.
“From start to finish, the junta did everything it could to fabricate cases against him in full confidence that the country’s kangaroo courts would come back with whatever punitive judgment the military wanted (…) Due process and a free and fair trial they were never remotely possible in the circumstances of this political persecution against him,” Robertson said.
Suu Kyi loses her freedom again for the Army she defended in recent years
The popular Oxford-educated leader, the daughter of Aung San, the late leader of Myanmar’s independence campaign from British colonies, has spent much of her political life detained under military rule.
However, in the midst of a tentative democracy when the Army was in favor of ending its 49-year control, Suu Kyi co-led the country and shared power with the military institution since 2015.
But whoever was the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize also aroused international outrage during that Administration, for not acting in the face of the Army’s genocide against the Rohingyas, the minority Muslim ethnic group in a country with a Buddhist majority.
For this reason, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, awarded by the European Parliament, and the Ambassador of Conscience Award, from Amnesty International, which she received in the 1990s, were withdrawn.
Suu Kyi even dismissed the charges against her country before the International Court of Justice in 2019, calling the case “incomplete and incorrect.”
Almost two years later, she was abruptly removed from her duties. The Army alleged alleged electoral fraud by the National League for Democracy party, led by Suu Kyi, which won the November 2020 elections with more than 80% of the vote. A resounding defeat for the military parties, which prevented the formation of a new government elected by the citizens.
Today, it is once again further removed from freedom at the hands of the Army that it once defended.
With Reuters and AP
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