Deposed Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been transferred by the ruling junta from prison to house arrest, a source told AFP on Wednesday. An army source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said former President Win Myint also benefited from the measure. However, it could not immediately be determined whether the decision for Aung San Suu Kyi was temporary or represented a formal reduction in her sentence. The junta also announced in a press release on Wednesday the amnesty of 3,300 prisoners on the occasion of the Burmese New Year.
Measures to protect vulnerable prisoners
Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said a heatwave had prompted authorities to take measures to protect vulnerable detainees. “Not only Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and U Win Myint, but also elderly prisoners received the necessary care due to the extreme heat,” Zaw Min Tun told AFP.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 78, a 1991 Nobel laureate, is serving a 27-year sentence for a string of criminal convictions ranging from corruption to flouting Covid restrictions. She had been largely hidden from the public eye since her arrest by the military during their 2021 coup takeover, seen only once in grainy state media photos taken in a courtroom in Naypyidaw, and was facing health problems according to the local press.
Local media reported that during her trial, which lasted several months, Ms Suu Kyi suffered dizziness, vomiting and was at times unable to eat due to a dental infection. Her son Kim Aris told AFP in February that she was still being held in a prison complex in Naypyidaw, the military-built capital.
A complex that did not have an air conditioning system during periods of heat, with concrete walls that oozed water during the monsoon, described to AFP last year Sean Turnell, incarcerated there for several months .
Aung San Suu Kyi remains very popular in Burma
The confinement in this isolated capital contrasts sharply with the years Aung San Suu Kyi spent under house arrest under the previous junta, where she became a world-famous democratic figurehead. During this period, she had lived in the family’s colonial-era mansion in central Yangon, after becoming known during large protests against the then junta in 1988.
Aung San Suu Kyi remains very popular in Burma, although her international image has been tarnished by her power-sharing deal with the generals and her failure to defend the persecuted Rohingya Muslim minority.
The prisoner amnesty, announced Wednesday, includes 13 Indonesians and 15 Sri Lankans who will be deported, the junta said. The other prisoners benefit from a reduction of one-sixth of their sentence, except those convicted of murder, terrorism and drug trafficking, the press release specifies.
Myanmar has been in the grip of a rebellion since the military overthrew the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021. But the junta is currently facing the greatest threat in its history, suffering setbacks and heavy losses in over the last few months. The local organization Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners (AAPP) estimates the number of civilian deaths since the start of the repression at more than 4,800.