Topline
Former Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi earned pardons on five of her 19 initial political prison charges today, shaving six years off a 33-year sentence, according to Burmese state media—but the 78-year-old is still slated to spend decades in jail following her arrest during a 2021 coup, as the country struggles to emerge from military rule after a short-lived transition to democracy.
Timeline
Barred from becoming president due to a clause in the country’s 2008 military constitution, Aung San Suu Kyi is granted the title of state counsellor, which is similar to prime minister, a key turning point in Myanmar’s years-long move away from military rule; her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), had won the 2015 general election.
The NLD secured a commanding 83% of the popular vote, even after more than a million Burmese citizens were unable to cast their ballot.
On the day Myanmar’s Parliament was scheduled to approve election results, army general Min Aung Hlaing and other military leaders cited a national emergency to stage a coup, imprisoning opposition figures and detaining Aung San Suu Kyi.
During a special court trial, Aung San Suu Kyi was charged with breaching COVID restrictions, incitement, and illegal walkie-talkie possession, among others, leading to a sentence of two years in prison as she awaited more cases to be settled.
The UN Security Council called for the release of all political prisoners, including Suu Kyi and former president Win Myint, citing concern over the “dramatic increase in humanitarian need” and failure to respect human rights, a month after Myanmar had released more than 5,770 prisoners.
The Myanmar court sentenced Suu Kyi to a total 33 years of jail, three of which would be spent in hard labor.
The Myanmar Supreme court heard the first of Suu Kyi’s appeals regarding election fraud and violation of the Official Secrets Act, with other hearings scheduled for July 12th and 18th to settle the remaining charges–all of which Suu Kyi has denied.
The Myanmar government announced plans to transfer Suu Kyi to house arrest in preparation for the nation’s religious ceremonies; General Min Aung Hlaing had released more than 2,100 prisoners earlier this May.
General Min Aung Hlaing granted pardon on five of Suu Kyi’s charges, though there are probably multiple reasons for doing so: The clemency coincided with the Full Moon Day of Waso, which signifies the beginning of Buddhist Lent, and it was also just as likely an effort to reengage in diplomatic negotiations with a bloc of other southeast Asian countries, according to a BBC report.
Key Background
The partial pardon is the latest chapter for a country roiled by political unrest. The 1991 Nobel laureate–honored for her “nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights”–is among thousands of others who received commuted death sentences or pardons as part of the nation’s Buddhist religious festival. Still, Suu Kyi can expect to spend the rest of her life in prison. Daughter of independence hero General Aung San, she started her political career in 1988 by founding the National League for Democracy and was promptly placed under house arrest for 22 years. Even despite Suu Kyi’s 2015 victory, Myanmar’s military retained sizable control over the government, thanks to a 2008-ratified constitution. The country has been in turmoil since the 2021 coup, as the military razed rural villages and cracked down on protests throughout the country. More than 16,200 people have been detained and 2,465 civilians killed during the years after the coup, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. As of December last year, more at least 1.4 million people had been displaced.
Tangent
Suu Kyi’s own political legacy is no less complicated. She had campaigned for the release of political prisoners and promised to tamp down fierce ethnic conflicts throughout the country, but failed to deliver on both accounts. Instead, the former state counsellor consistently downplayed, dismissed—and even defended—the Myanmar military’s brutal offenses against the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority. In 2017, the military launched a campaign into the Rahkine state, forcing more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims to flee to Bangladesh. Two years after, Suu Kyi had framed the military’s atrocities as part of a counter terrorism operation before the UN’s top court.
Further Reading
Aung San Suu Kyi has some of her prison sentences reduced by Myanmar’s military-led government