Calls grow in UK for release of Suu Kyi from prison

Calls are growing in the UK for Aung San Suu Kyi to be released from prison where she has been held for the last four years by Myanmar’s military regime. Former foreign ministers Andrew Mitchell and Sir Alan Duncan said her detention meant that the military junta could carry on its human rights abuses on its people. Ms Suu Kyi — the former democratically elected leader of Myanmar who has become a deeply controversial figure after refusing to speak out against her country’s extreme violence against its Rohingya Muslim minority — is 79 and in poor health.

Mr Mitchell, ex-foreign minister and former deputy foreign secretary, said that “many will condemn” the stance she took over the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar and the violence they faced. But he added: “Locking up the elected leader in such harsh conditions by an illegitimate military cabal is a monstrous repetition of their illegal behaviour and underlines that Myanmar continues to be under the yoke of a pariah regime.” Ms Suu Kyi’s fall from grace is explored in a new Independent TV documentary, Cancelled: The rise and fall of Aung San Suu Kyi, which takes an unbiased look at her life and the plight of Myanmar.

Mr Mitchell described his time working alongside her: “As British development secretary I worked closely with Aung San Suu Kyi — indeed joined her on a remarkable campaigning visit inside Myanmar prior to her democratic victory and undoubted mandate. “Her current imprisonment in harsh conditions is outrageous and yet further evidence that Myanmar is being ruled by an internationally condemned junta with neither legitimacy nor humanity.”

Andrew Mitchell

Sir Alan told The Independent: “She is the one great hope for Myanmar. The world should be campaigning for her to be free in the same way as they did for Nelson Mandela.” Their intervention comes after three former UK foreign secretaries — William Hague, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Labour’s Jack Straw – all called for her release. In the documentary, Lord Hague described her as a “political prisoner on trumped up charges” imprisoned because she was a “force for democracy”. It was possible to be critical of the country’s former leader, “but also say we should be campaigning for her release”, he added.

Many former supporters of Ms Suu Kyi saw an appearance she made at the International Criminal Court in 2019, defending the actions of the military by saying it wasn’t committing acts of genocide, as a betrayal. Ms Suu Kyi, who studied at Oxford, married British lecturer Michael Aris and raised her young family in the UK before going back to Myanmar in 1988, has been held since the military seized power in a coup in February 2021, a move that plunged the country into conflict.

In the aftermath, she was convicted of offences which ranged from corruption and treason to violations of telecommunications law, which she denies.

In total, she faces 27 years in prison, meaning she could not be released until she is more than 100 years old. Although details of her imprisonment have been conflicting it is thought she has been kept in solitary confinement in a prison in Naypyidaw, the capital of Myanmar, since her sentencing. Sean Turnell, who was sentenced at the same time, has described how his cell was “completely open to rats and spiders, centipedes and these awful black tarantulas”.

William Hague, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw warned the ousted leader was jailed on trumped-up charges and said she deserves the chance to lead her country democratically. Ms Suu Kyi is believed to have spent long periods in solitary confinement since her arrest in February 2021.