Aung San Suu Kyi released: Party official

YANGON: Aung San Suu Kyi, the civic leader of Myanmar who was overthrown in a military coup in 2021, has reportedly been transferred from prison to a government facility, according to a party spokesman.

Since she was detained during the February 1, 2021 coup, Suu Kyi has only once been photographed by official media, from an empty courtroom in the military-built city Naypyidaw.

The United Nations estimates that more than one million people have been displaced as a result of the coup in the Southeast Asian country.

Under the condition of anonymity, a representative of the National League for Democracy told AFP on Friday that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had been transferred to a high-level venue compound on Monday night.

The party source also stated that Suu Kyi had met with the lower house speaker of the nation, Ti Khun Myat, and would probably meet with China’s special envoy for Asian affairs, Deng Xijuan, when he was in the country.

Suu Kyi, according to a source from a different political party, has been relocated to a VIP complex in Naypyidaw.

The first known contact with a foreign representative since Suu Kyi’s detention was when Thailand’s foreign minister claimed to have met her in July.

Although a junta official told AFP that the discussion had lasted longer than an hour, he did not elaborate on the topics covered.

Since her arrest, there have been worries about the 78-year-old Nobel laureate’s health, notably when she was being tried in a junta court where she was compelled to appear at hearings virtually every day.

For a number of offences, including embezzlement, the possession of illicit walkie-talkies, and violating coronavirus regulations, Suu Kyi was given a 33-year prison term.

Rights organisations denounced her trial as a fraud intended to banish the beloved politician from politics.

Suu Kyi was transferred to a jail camp in a different area of the capital in June 2022, more than a year after being placed under house arrest in Naypyidaw.

According to sources who spoke to AFP at the time, she was no longer allowed to employ her domestic staff of about ten individuals and was instead given military-selected aides.

The years Suu Kyi spent under house arrest under a previous dictatorship, where she developed into a well-known democracy figurehead, are a far cry from her confinement in the remote capital.

She was then a resident of her family’s colonial-era lakeside palace in the busy city of Yangon, where she frequently addressed audiences outside her garden wall.