As Myanmar people were celebrating the last day of the traditional New Year water festival on Tuesday, the regime quietly moved Myanmar’s detained former leader and Nobel laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to an undisclosed location. It is assumed she has been moved to a house in Naypyitaw with more extensive facilities. In any case, she remains a prisoner.
Delivering the news, the regime chose its words carefully.
“Since the weather is extremely hot, it is not only for Aung San Suu Kyi… For all those who need necessary precautions, especially elderly prisoners, we are working to protect them from heatstroke,” junta spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun said in comments reported by four media outlets.
It appears that President U Win Myint, who has been detained in Taungoo Prison in Bago Region, was also transferred to a new location, most likely a house in Naypyitaw with air conditioning.
Suu Kyi, 78, has been detained since the Myanmar military overthrew her elected civilian government in a 2021 coup. She is serving 27 years in prison for convictions ranging from treason and bribery to violations of the telecommunications law—charges she denies.
From the outset, the military regime has treated Suu Kyi like a convicted criminal in Naypyitaw. Unsurprisingly, it exercises a double standard on those occasions when it decides it needs to punish some of the many actual criminals in its own ranks.
Several top-ranking generals including former home affairs minister Lieutenant General Soe Htut and ex-Myanmar Investment Commission chairman Lieutenant General Moe Myint Tun, who were detained on corruption and high treason charges in 2023, have not been sent to prisons in Naypyitaw or anywhere else. It is not known yet where they are being detained, but several military sources close to the opposition said they were placed under house arrest with facilities and regular medical check-ups. Though they are genuine criminals, they are being treated as “VIP prisoners” of the regime.
By all accounts, life in Naypyitaw Prison is hellish.
Suu Kyi’s Australian economic advisor Sean Turnell, author of “An Unlikely Prisoner”, told Nikkei Asia that “The weather was off-the-dial awful—hot all the time except when it was pouring with rain in the monsoon. As befitting a swamp, it was full of rats, ants, mosquitoes and scorpions. An awful, awful place.”
Prior to her transfer to house arrest, the State Counselor was kept in a small, specially built prison building. According to Turnell, she turned down an offer of air conditioning, asking prison authorities to install it for the other prisoners first and insisting she be provided with it last.
A former senior government official who worked with Suu Kyi when she was in power and met her again as a prisoner in the compound recalled, “She is the toughest among all prisoners [in Naypyitaw] and her iron will is amazing… she even cracked jokes when we met [at the court] and offered a prediction on when I would be freed.” She wasn’t wrong; he was released in 2023.
It is uncertain whether Suu Kyi foresaw her own relocation. Would she care?
Thai news media last year acted as spin merchants for the Myanmar regime, broadcasting its propaganda that she had been moved to house arrest. It wasn’t true, but it continued to be reported as fact by Thai media, falsely casting the junta in a favorable light.
There have also been rumors that several top generals went to meet Suu Kyi in prison to negotiate with her soon after the coup. Did it really happen?
Suu Kyi told fellow prisoners whom she met in court that no one—and she emphasized no one—had met with her.
So why has the regime decided to relocate her now?
The regime faces unprecedented armed resistance, an escalation of the civil war and joint coordinated attacks by key resistance groups, which have seen the junta lose control of more territories and key border trading points with China and Thailand. The military’s strength is dwindling and hundreds of officers and soldiers have surrendered in recent battles with ethnic armed groups.
In the first week of December, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met the junta’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Than Swe in Beijing after the regime pleaded with China to intervene in the armed conflict in northern Shan State, where regime troops suffered a series of heavy defeats.
“China hopes that Myanmar will achieve national reconciliation and continue its political transformation process under the constitutional framework as soon as possible,” Wang said in a statement.
Over the past two weeks, Chinese Ambassador to Myanmar Chen Hai has visited former dictator Than Shwe, his former deputy Maung Aye, and former President General Thein Sein in Naypyitaw. According to an embassy statement, during the meetings, Chen said China continues to support peace and stability, reconciliation, economic development and improved livelihoods for the people of Myanmar.
In Naypyitaw, Chen also held talks with current junta ministers including Home Affairs Minister Lieutenant General Yar Pyae, and former Navy chief and current National Security Advisor Moe Aung.
It is interesting to see that high-level visitors from Beijing still seek an audience with Than Shwe, though he formally left the military in 2011. Among the senior Chinese officials who have made the trek to his Naypyitaw mansion are Song Tao, former head of the International Liaison Department of the Communist Party of China; then-Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang; and Peng Xiubin, director-general of the party’s International Liaison Department.
Than Shwe was seen as a chess player when he headed the regime—keeping Suu Kyi under house arrest at her lakeside residence for years and strategically freeing her on occasion, whenever the regime came under increased international pressure, in a calculated game of “catch and release”.
Since the coup, Beijing has repeatedly dispatched its special envoy to Myanmar. One of the issues the envoy has formally raised is the well-being of Suu Kyi. He has reportedly asked—to no avail—to meet her. When she was in power, Suu Kyi steadily built up a good relationship with Beijing. In 2020 Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Myanmar, making his first trip to the country as China’s leader, and the first by any Chinese president in 19 years. China has several multibillion-dollar infrastructure projects in Myanmar. At the time of Xi’s visit, Chinese officials confided to Myanmar friends that they trusted Suu Kyi more than the country’s corrupt generals.
Interestingly, following the news of Suu Kyi’s transfer to a new location, Myanmar opposition groups widely shared unconfirmed reports that the Chinese ambassador will finally be allowed to meet with her.
In any case, for all the regime’s efforts to downplay the news that Myanmar’s detained senior civilian leaders have been transferred to house arrest—and its official line that “we are working to protect them from heatstroke”—many political observers see the hand of China in the move.
