Former Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, already sentenced to six years in prison, received an additional five-year prison sentence on Wednesday for corruption, a source familiar with the matter told AFP. In this part of the trial, the 76-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner is accused by the junta of having received 600,000 dollars and more than eleven kilos of gold in bribes from the former minister in charge. from the Rangoon region, Phyo Min Thein. Aung San Suu Kyi rejects these allegations. Ten counts of corruption have been brought against her.
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In good health according to a source familiar with the matter interviewed earlier this week, the ex-leader has been detained since the military coup of February 1, 2021 which ended a decade of democratic transition in Burma. She is targeted by a multitude of offenses (violation of a law on state secrets dating from the colonial era, electoral fraud, sedition, corruption, etc.) and risks decades in prison in total.
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The Nobel laureate is serving the beginning of her sentence under house arrest, in the place where she has been held incommunicado for more than a year and where she must remain for the duration of her trial. The latter is held behind closed doors, his lawyers being prohibited from speaking to the press and international organizations.
Many observers denounce this procedure solely motivated, according to them, by political considerations: definitively excluding Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of the hero of independence and big winner of the 2015 and 2020 elections, from the political arena.
Several relatives of the Nobel Prize winner have already been sentenced to heavy sentences: capital punishment for a former parliamentarian, 75 years in prison for a former minister, twenty years for one of his collaborators. Others went into exile or went into hiding.
Aung San Suu Kyi spent nearly fifteen years under house arrest under previous military dictatorships. The February 2021 coup plunged the country into chaos. Nearly 1,800 civilians were killed by security forces and more than 13,000 arrested, according to a local observer. Militias have taken up arms against the junta in several regions of Burma.