Robert GreenallAnd
Jonathan Head,South-East Asia correspondent, in Bangkok
Myanmar State Television
Myanmar’s former leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been placed under house arrest, the country’s state media reported.
The 80-year-old Nobel laureate has been detained – likely in a military prison in the capital Nay Pyi Taw – since she was removed from office in a 2021 military coup.
In a statement, military leader Min Aung Hlaing, who led the coup, said he had “commuted the remainder of his sentence to be served at the designated residence.”
Aung San Suu Kyi came to power in 2015 after Myanmar’s then-leaders introduced democratic reforms. Before that, she spent decades under military rule as a pro-democracy activist and was under house arrest for more than 15 years.
State media broadcast a photo of her sitting with two uniformed officers.
Her son Kim Aris said he was skeptical of the announcement and that he didn’t even have proof that she was alive. He said the photo made “no sense” because it was taken in 2022.
“I hope it’s true. I still haven’t seen any real evidence that it was moved,” he told the BBC.
“So until I am allowed to communicate with her, or someone can independently verify her condition and where she is, then I won’t believe anything.”
Prior to this announcement, nothing was known about her health or living conditions, and Kim Aris said in December that he had not heard from her in years.
His legal team told Reuters they had received no direct notification of his house arrest.
Little has been seen – and heard – of Aung San Suu Kyi since she was arrested the day the armed forces overthrew her elected government more than five years ago.
Her lawyers haven’t seen her in more than three years; her family has had no contact with her for more than two years.
The only image of her seen before Thursday was from a court appearance in May 2021, at the start of a series of trials by the military on charges that were widely dismissed as fabricated.
Since then, his 33-year sentence has been reduced several times.
His sudden appearance in state media suggests that military authorities may be preparing for further changes in his status – possibly his partial or full release.
Coup leader Min Aung Hlaing is eager to end his regime’s international isolation and appears more confident after a series of battlefield victories against armed opposition groups.
The military junta also held elections earlier this year, restoring a nominally democratic government but one that leaves the same military leaders in charge.
“The military regime that rules Myanmar is largely on the wrong track. [public relations] offensive at the moment,” Sean Turnell, a former economic adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi, told the BBC’s Newsday.
He added that Myanmar’s military was “trying to convince the world that this is a legitimate government”, and reports of Aung San Suu Kyi being transferred to house arrest were “an integral part of that”.
Although Turnell said he is “really hopeful” that the reports are true, he has “a lot of doubts.”
Turnell, an Australian economist, was detained alongside Myanmar’s democratically elected leaders for more than a year after the 2021 military coup.
During this period, he was held in the same prison as Aung San Suu Kyi, where conditions were “medieval” and “just really horrible”, Turnell recalled, adding that the food and medical care were “bad” and the cells were “open to the elements”.
With Aung San Suu Kyi now 80, these are “terrible conditions for her,” Turnell said.
During her previous imprisonment, Aung San Suu Kyi’s wife her dignified, non-violent resistance won her admirers across Myanmar and around the world, and she delivered famous speeches to her supporters from her family home. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.
But her decision to lead Myanmar’s defense against genocide charges at the International Court of Justice following the military’s atrocities against Rohingya Muslims in 2017 has seriously tarnished her international image as a saint.
Despite her years of incarceration away from the public eye, Aung San Suu Kyi’s standing among the Burmese people remains “extremely high”, according to Turnell.
“She has a charisma and a connection with the Burmese people that is almost spiritual. And I don’t think that has diminished at all,” he said, adding that people in the country “just hope she is released.”
