In a prison cell in the middle of Myanmar (Burma), isolated from other prisoners, sits an elderly woman who marks her 80th birthday today. She is serving a 27-year sentence. Yet she is no ordinary 80-year-old. Today, she should be approaching the end of her second term as de facto head of her country’s government, having won an overwhelming election victory almost five years ago. She should be thinking about retirement and handing over the reins to the next generation to take her country’s democracy further.
Instead, she has spent the past four years in jail after her elected government was overthrown in a military coup on 1 February 2021, detained by a military junta still seen as illegitimate by much of the world.
One does not have to agree with Suu Kyi on everything to know that her current plight is a gross injustice
That woman is Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. And today, no one except her captors knows how she is, and there is fear for her well-being. Individuals familiar with her situation indicate that her specific location remains unknown.
Between 1989 and 2010, Suu Kyi spent a cumulative total of 15 years, in three separate periods, under house arrest. In 1991, she was awarded the Nobel peace prize for her courageous leadership of Myanmar’s democracy movement. Unable to receive it in person due to her detention in her home in Yangon, her sons Alexander and Kim Aris accepted the award on her behalf.
Ten days ago, Kim Aris launched a global campaign for his mother’s release, seeking 80,000 messages of support for her 80th birthday. He should be applauded for his persistence. He has lived with this struggle since he was just 11 years old, when his mother returned to Yangon from Oxford to nurse her dying mother – and ended up leading her country’s fight for freedom against the military. For most of the past four decades, he has grown up with little or no contact with her.
Suu Kyi, daughter of General Aung San, the assassinated leader of Myanmar’s independence struggle known as the ‘Father of the Nation’, was married to an Oxford academic, Michael Aris, who died from cancer in 1999. She made the painful decision not to visit him when he was dying, nor to attend his funeral in Britain, because she knew that if she left Myanmar, the military might not allow her to return. Her sons are British nationals. Britain was Myanmar’s colonial power until its independence in 1948, a struggle led by her father. Britain therefore bears a historic and moral responsibility to Myanmar.
So the question confronting Sir Keir Starmer and David Lammy is what are they doing to secure her release? As a recent Conservative party Human Rights Commission report titled ‘Unspeakable Tragedy’ recommended, the Prime Minister and the Foreign Secretary should meet Aris, as well as representatives of Myanmar’s legitimate National Unity Government (NUG), ethnic and religious communities and civil society, to discuss how the United Kingdom can step up its efforts.
But let us be clear about two things. First, Suu Kyi is by no means Myanmar’s only political prisoner. Indeed, she is one of over 22,000. Britain should be demanding the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners – who should never have been arrested in the first place. At least 27 elected members of parliament have been killed by the military regime since the coup. We must act now to prevent any further killings.
And second, when one looks at the tragedy of Myanmar today, one has to reflect on the fact that Suu Kyi – despite her extraordinary courage and sacrifice – is not blameless. Over four million people are displaced, and more than 100,000 homes have been destroyed by the military’s attacks, alongside schools, hospitals, and places of worship. Almost 20 million are now in desperate need of life-saving humanitarian aid, and over two-thirds of the population – an estimated 40 million people – exist below the poverty line.
Much of that killing has taken place since the coup. But Myanmar has been in conflict for over 75 years, enduring the world’s longest civil war. Atrocities took place during Suu Kyi’s time in government too, not least the genocide of the Rohingyas and an explosion of anti-Muslim violence throughout the country. It was the military that perpetrated those crimes of genocide, but she defended them at The Hague. That defence remains a deep stain on her legacy.
Following her release from house arrest in 2010, she engaged with the military during a decade of apparent political reform, was elected to parliament in a by-election, and then won an overwhelming majority in the country’s first free and fair elections in a quarter of a century in 2015. Barred from becoming a president by the military-drafted constitution, she became ‘State Counsellor’, a role created to enable her to serve as de facto head of government. Five years later, in 2020, she won re-election, only to be ousted in an illegal coup led by the army chief General Min Aung Hlaing in 2021.
No doubt during her time power-sharing with the military between 2015 and 2020 Suu Kyi endured extraordinary pressures and tensions. And to be fair, she did take some steps to address the crisis that unfolded in Rakhine State, not least by mandating Kofi Annan, the UN’s former secretary general, to establish a commission to address the conflict and offer a way forward for the Rohingya. Yet she overlooked the genocidal clearance operations against the Rohingya, staying silent to preserve her alliance with the military – even as evidence of genocide mounted. Moreover, anecdotes abound of her dismissive attitude towards the country’s ethnic and religious minorities.
While she may not have condoned violence and hatred, Suu Kyi’s vision of Myanmar was of a Burman Buddhist nation in which minorities exist, rather than of a multi-ethnic, multi-religious nation in which all ethnicities and religions have an equal stake. That narrow vision continues to alienate many communities today.
But one does not have to agree with Suu Kyi on everything to know that her current plight is a gross injustice. She won a democratic mandate in November 2020 and should be allowed to exercise it. She and her colleagues should not be in prison. They should be in government, to which they were elected. Only through genuine democratic processes can accountability take root.
It is time the world stopped ignoring or forgetting Myanmar’s crisis and its vulnerable population. It is time for the United Kingdom to step up its efforts to mobilise the international community, seek an urgent United Nations Security Council discussion on Myanmar’s crisis, implement robust targeted sanctions to cut off funds and arms to the military, and block the aviation fuel that enables the military’s airstrikes against civilians.
It is time, too, to sanction the military’s major backers – China and Russia – for their provision of weapons and financial and political support. It is time to bring the perpetrators of war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide to justice. And it is time to provide a lifeline of humanitarian aid to the people of Myanmar, not through the junta but through local civil society and cross-border delivery.
On her 80th birthday, let us redouble our efforts not only to seek Suu Kyi’s release, but to stand with every political prisoner and every survivor of this brutal regime. Let us honour her milestone by remembering Myanmar – and recommitting to support its people’s fight for freedom, dignity, peace, and justice.
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