A Myanmar sentenced ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to four more years in prison.
Suu Kyi was detained during a military coup nearly a year ago. She faced nearly a dozen charges. In February, she was handed a two-year sentence for breaching the export-import law by importing and owning walkie-talkies. She received an additional year for possessing a set of signal jammers.
Suu Kyi was the Nobel Peace Laureate in 1991. Her party, the National League for Democracy, secured landslide victories three times between 1990 and 2020. The military claimed widespread election fraud. She spent a total of 15 years under house arrest between 1989 and 2010.
However, her untainted reputation suffered following her refusal to speak out against the military’s ruthless ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims. More than 700,000 Rohingya were forced to flee to Bangladesh.
The military-led government has not allowed any outside party to meet with Suu Kyi since it seized power. It has been accused of politicizing her arrest.
“The Myanmar junta’s courtroom circus of secret proceedings on bogus charges is all about steadily piling up more convictions against Aung San Suu Kyi so that she will remain in prison indefinitely,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch.
“Once again, Aung San Suu Kyi has become a symbol of what is happening to her country and returned to the role of political hostage of military hell-bent on controlling power by using intimidation and violence,” Robertson said in a statement. “Fortunately for her and the future of Myanmar, the Myanmar people’s movement has grown well beyond just the leadership of one woman, and one political party.”
Suu Kyi faces at least seven more charges — including five counts of corruption. The maximum sentence for her alleged crimes is a staggering 89 years.
