The legal team for Aung San Suu Kyi plans to meet the detained former leader of Myanmar on Sunday after she was transferred to house arrest in the capital by the military-backed government, a representative said on Friday.
The Nobel laureate has been detained since the military ousted the civilian government in a coup in February 2021. The coup triggered a deadly civil war that has engulfed much of the country, and her whereabouts had been unclear.
“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is currently still in Nay Pyi Taw,” a member of her legal team told Reuters, confirming that she had been moved to house arrest in the capital on Thursday night.
On Thursday, state media reported she would be moved to house arrest, but did not say where. State media also broadcast a photograph of Aung San Suu Kyi, seated on a wooden bench with two uniformed personnel, the first public image of her in years. However, authorities did not say how recently the picture was taken.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s legal team plans to meet the 80-year-old on Sunday to discuss her position and bring her some supplies, such as food and medicine.
Sending supplies each Sunday was the regular practice of her legal team, the representative said, and after they were prevented from seeing Suu Kyi in person, the supplies were dropped off at a police station to be passed on.
“On Sunday, since Daw Aung San Suu Kyi had already been transferred to house arrest, it means that while going to deliver her provisions as usual, we would be able to meet her as a team to discuss the next steps of the process,” the legal team member said. (Story continues below)
Migrant workers protesting against the military junta in Myanmar hold pictures of Aung San Suu Kyi, during a candlelight vigil at a temple in Bangkok, on March 28, 2021. (Photo: Reuters)
After a marathon run of secret trials following the coup, Suu Kyi was sentenced to 33 years after she was convicted of charges ranging from corruption and inciting election fraud to violating state secrecy rules. Her allies maintain the charges were politically motivated and aimed at sidelining her.
The sentence was later reduced to 27 years, and then by a sixth in a Myanmar New Year amnesty on April 17 that freed her ally and co-defendant Win Myint, the former president.
On Thursday, her sentence was reduced by a further one-sixth as part of a wider amnesty of prisoners in Myanmar’s jails, before the move to house arrest was announced.
Myanmar’s junta chief-turned-president Min Aung Hlaing, who led the coup, has faced persistent international pressure to release political detainees since a recent election, including from Asean. He is seeking to re-engage with the Southeast Asian bloc after it banned Myanmar from its summits as a result of the coup.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of the country’s independence hero General Aung San, was held under house arrest for a total of 15 years under a previous junta at her family residence on Yangon’s Inya Lake, where she famously gave impassioned speeches to crowds of supporters over the metal gates of the property.
