The Myanmar military regime is planning to move the country’s detained democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from a prison to house arrest, sources familiar with her case said. Observers saw it as the ruling generals’ latest attempt to ease mounting international pressure on them.
The junta put the 78-year-old ousted leader in solitary confinement in Naypyitaw Prison in June last year after confining her to her house in the capital since the first day of its attempted coup in February 2021.
Daw Sandar Min, a former member of the central committee of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD), told The Irrawaddy that the regime’s transfer of the party leader was “90 percent certain.”
“It has been a few days since I learned that the SAC [State Administration Council, the regime’s governing body] intended to move her from the prison. But I’m not sure if it has been done yet,” she said.
Daw Sandar Min was one of the party members allowed by the regime to meet Daw Aung San Suu Kyi in prison late last year to explain to her the junta’s election plan.
The regime has not officially confirmed Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s transfer.
The Associated Press reported that the regime plans to move the ousted civilian leader to house arrest as part of a mass amnesty for prisoners in connection with a religious ceremony next week.
Lawyers for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi could not confirm the move but said they sent some food parcels for her via the prison authorities a few days ago.
The junta has imposed a gag order on her legal team preventing them from talking to the media about her cases. Currently, she is serving a combined sentence of 33 years in prison after the regime brought a series of cases against her for alleged offenses including corruption and election fraud. She pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Rumors that the regime plans to transfer Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to house arrest have been circulating since Thai Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai was permitted by the junta to meet her in Naypyitaw on July 9. Don revealed the meeting at a summit of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers, claiming that Myanmar’s detained leader called for talks to solve the crisis brought about by the coup. For more than two years since the takeover, the regime has been battling a popular armed resistance movement across the country.
Opponents of the regime, including the shadow National Unity Government, have dismissed the meeting, and Don’s account of it, as one-sided, pointing out that their leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been unable to give her version of the encounter.
Political observers said that even if the transfer to house confinement goes ahead, it would be nothing more than the regime’s attempt to ease the mounting international pressure on it.
In the latest in a series of international actions against the regime, the US recently imposed sanctions on two Myanmar state-owned banks that play a crucial role in the regime’s international financial transactions. Regionally, ASEAN has banned the junta’s leadership from attending its summits since late 2021 over their failure to implement the bloc’s peace plan for Myanmar, which includes a call for an immediate cessation of violence in the country.
The regime has responded to the growing resistance movement with indiscriminate air strikes, raids and arbitrary killings across the country. As of Tuesday, the junta had killed more than 3,800 people, including people engaged in anti-regime activities and civilians killed in indiscriminate attacks.
Meanwhile, sources said that if Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is put under house arrest, this time she would probably be confined in a ministerial residence in Naypyitaw with tight security.
They said the ousted State Counselor would be held there with female aides assigned by the regime, rather than the personal aides with whom she was living at an undisclosed location before being moved to prison last year.
Under the previous military regime, she spent almost 15 of the 21 years from 1989 to 2010 under house arrest for her fight for democracy in Myanmar.
