Aung San Suu Kyi, 78, will be imprisoned for over three decades.
Myanmar’s ruling military junta has awarded ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi partial pardon, reducing her 33-year prison sentence by six years. Suu Kyi, a ‘democracy icon’ in the West, was deposed in a coup in 2021.
Suu Kyi’s sentence was reduced on Tuesday by military officer Aung Lin Dwe. According to state television, Suu Kyi was pardoned for five offences, including breaking coronavirus regulations, unlawfully importing and possessing walkie-talkies, and sedition. An extra 7,000 convicts were also granted clemency to commemorate a Buddhist holiday, according to the newspaper.
While the pardon reduces Suu Kyi’s prison sentence by six years, she will still serve 27 years in prison, having been convicted on many counts of corruption and electoral fraud since her departure. For the 78-year-old, the sentence basically equates to life in jail.
Suu Kyi was detained and deposed in a military coup in February 2021, after Myanmar’s top generals proclaimed her election victory the previous November illegitimate. The military promised new elections this year, but on Monday extended the state of emergency it enacted after seizing control in 2021.
Suu Kyi was first placed under house arrest by Myanmar’s military regime in 1990, after her National League for Democracy party won the country’s first election in three decades. The military refused to surrender control, and Suu Kyi was detained for 15 of the next 20 years. She returned to politics after her release, becoming state counsellor – the equivalent of prime minister – in 2016.
Although she was praised by Western politicians and journalists during her detention and subsequent rise to power, Suu Kyi fell out of favour with her former supporters when she presided over a controversial crackdown on the country’s Rohingya Muslim minority, which led to her being charged with genocide at the International Court of Justice in 2019.
The UN has frequently pushed the junta to release all political prisoners, and on Monday asked the generals to restore democratic governance.