On April 30, 2019, Myanmar’s former State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi inspects an honor guard at the Peace Palace in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. AP/Heng Sinith
Bangkok — A judicial official reported that a court in military-ruled Myanmar on Friday convicted former leader Aung San Suu Kyi of corruption and sentenced her to seven years in prison in the last of a series of criminal trials against her.
Following a succession of politically motivated prosecutions since the army overthrew her elected administration in February 2021, she now faces a total of 33 years in prison due to the court’s decision.
The case that concluded on Friday involved five violations of the anti-corruption statute and followed convictions on seven previous corruption crimes, each punishable by up to 15 years in jail and a fine.
Suu Kyi, who is 77 years old, was also found guilty of illegally importing and possessing walkie-talkies, violating coronavirus limits, violating the country’s official secrets statute, sedition, and election fraud.
All of her prior crimes had landed her in prison for a total of 26 years.
Suu Kyi’s supporters and independent experts assert that the multiple allegations against her and her associates are an attempt to legitimize the military’s seizure of power while removing her from politics before to the election the military has promised for the following year.
In the five counts of corruption decided on Friday, Suu Kyi was accused of abusing her position and causing a loss of public funds by failing to adhere to financial standards when granted authorization to former Cabinet member Win Myat Aye to rent, purchase, and operate a helicopter.
Suu Kyi, who held the position of state counselor, was the de facto leader of government. The former president of her administration, Win Myint, was a co-defendant in the same case.
A legal official who insisted on anonymity out of fear of retaliation from the authorities revealed Friday’s judgement in the purpose-built courtroom of the major prison on the outskirts of the city, Naypyitaw. The trial was closed to the media, diplomats, and spectators, and her attorneys were prohibited from discussing it by gag order.
The legal official stated that Suu Kyi received concurrent sentences of three years for each of four counts and four years for the charge relating to the purchase of a helicopter, for a total of seven years. Win Myint was given identical punishments.
All accusations were disputed by the defendants, and her attorneys are expected to file an appeal in the following days.
At least for the time being, the conclusion of the court trials against Suu Kyi offers the chance that she will be permitted outside visitors, which she has been denied since her detention.
The military government has repeatedly denied all requests to meet with her, including those from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which seeks to mediate an end to the crisis in Myanmar, which some United Nations experts have described as a civil war due to the armed opposition to military rule.
Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of Myanmar’s military-installed administration, told the United Nations’ special envoy Noeleen Heyzer in August that he was “open to organizing a meeting at the appropriate moment” between her and Suu Kyi.
A statement from the military government stated, “After the conclusion of the judicial procedure, we will evaluate our next steps based on the circumstances.”
Suu Kyi is presently being imprisoned in a newly constructed wing of the prison in Naypyitaw, next to the courthouse where her trial took place, together with three policewomen whose responsibility it is to help her.
Allowing access to Aung San Suu Kyi has been a prominent demand of the numerous international critics of Myanmar’s military authorities, who have been subject to diplomatic and political sanctions for their human rights abuses and persecution of democracy.
State-controlled media said last year that Win Myat Aye, the figure at the core of the corruption investigation that concluded on Friday, only utilized the hired helicopter for 84.95 hours between 2019 and 2021, but paid for 720 flight hours, resulting in a loss of more than $3.5 million.
The state-run Global New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported that he also allegedly failed to follow formal procedures while purchasing a state-owned helicopter, resulting in an additional loss of 11 million USD.
Win Myat Aye is currently the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management in the National Unity Government, a parallel administration founded by elected lawmakers who were banned from assuming their posts when the military seized control last year. The military has designated NUG as a “terrorist group” that is prohibited.
Between 1989 and 2010, Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar’s slain independence hero General Aung San, was under house arrest as a political prisoner.
Her courageous opposition to the military regime in Myanmar made her a symbol of the peaceful campaign for freedom and earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.
Her National League for Democracy won the 2015 general election handily, ushering in a civilian government for the first time since a military coup in 1962.
Suu Kyi was attacked for showing deference to the military and condoning atrocities it is credibly accused of conducting in a 2017 campaign against the Muslim Rohingya minority after she assumed office.
Her National League for Democracy again won by a landslide in the 2020 election, but less than three months later, elected parliamentarians were prevented from assuming their seats in Parliament, and senior members of her cabinet and party were jailed.
The army claimed that it intervened because of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election, while impartial election observers did not identify any significant abnormalities.
The army’s takeover in 2021 sparked large nonviolent protests, which security authorities attempted to quell with lethal force and which quickly escalated into armed opposition.
Protesters gather and display the three-fingered pro-democracy salute in Sule Square, Yangon, Myanmar, on February 22, 2021. Hkun Lat / Getty
According to a comprehensive list published by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a non-governmental group that monitors deaths and arrests, Myanmar security forces have murdered at least 2,685 civilians and imprisoned 16,651.
In its first resolution on the situation in Myanmar since the army’s takeover, the U.N. Security Council urged Myanmar’s military rulers to free all “arbitrarily held” inmates, including Suu Kyi, on Wednesday of last week.
The U.N. resolution also demands an immediate end to violence in Myanmar and asks all parties in the nation to work toward initiating a dialogue and reconciliation in order to end the conflict peacefully.
Myanmar’s foreign ministry stated that the Southeast Asian nation’s situation is entirely internal and poses no threat to world peace and security.
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