Aung San Suu Kyi faces charges

Special Desk

Deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been sentenced to prison after being convicting on charges widely dismissed as politically motivated.

Aung San Suu Kyi, convicted in a ruling, is set to serve two years in detention at an undisclosed location, a sentence reduced from four years after a partial pardon from the country’s military chief.

Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been found guilty of inciting dissent and breaking Covid rules, in the first of a series of verdicts that could see her jailed for life. Suu Kyi faces 11 charges in total and denies them all. They have been widely condemned as unjust.

She has been in detention since a military coup in February toppled her elected civilian government. She was handed the four year sentence by a court but junta chief Min Aung Hlaing later reduced it to two years.

It is not clear when Suu Kyi will be placed in prison as she is presently held at an undisclosed location. Co-defendant Win Myint, the former president and Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party ally, was also jailed for four years under the same charges.

UN Human Rights chief Michelle Bachelet condemned the trial and said it would only deepen rejection of the coup. UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss, meanwhile, called on Myanmar to release all political prisoners and allow a return to democracy. “The arbitrary detention of elected politicians only risks further unrest,” she said.

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And rights group Amnesty called the charges bogus, saying it was the latest example of the military’s determination to eliminate all opposition and suffocate freedoms in Myanmar. Suu Kyi is next due in court on 14 December, when she will face charges of possessing illegal walkie-talkies.

Suu Kyi is one of more than 10,600 people to have been arrested by the junta since February, and at least 1,303 others killed in the demonstrations, according to the monitoring group Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.