Myanmar: Aung San Suu Kyi’s prison sentence reduced by 6 years

The military government in Myanmar has reduced the prison sentence for Aung San Suu Kyi, the Southeast Asian nation’s ousted civilian leader, by six years, a military spokesperson said Tuesday.

The move was part of a widespread amnesty often granted to mark religious holidays, according to Myawaddy TV News — a channel run by the military government. The announcement came as a surprise but would not significantly change the fate of Suu Kyi, who was deposed by Myanmar’s military in a February 2021 coup.

Her lawyer said that Suu Kyi, 78, still has to serve 25 more years in prison.

Suu Kyi has been serving a 33-year sentence on corruption and other charges since December 2021. Rights groups and supporters say the charges were trumped up and meant to keep the Nobel Peace Prize laureate, who is extremely popular in Myanmar, from elected office.

In a telephone interview, Suu Kyi’s lawyer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of a gag order prohibiting him from talking publicly about the case, said the prison terms for the five convictions against his client that were overturned were set to expire this year.

Suu Kyi and her enduring popularity in Myanmar have long been a thorn in the side of the Myanmar military, which ruled for half a century after seizing power in 1962. The military held her under house arrest for 15 years and invalidated the first election she won in 1990. It began relaxing its grip on power in 2010, and Suu Kyi once again led her National League for Democracy Party to victory five years later.

In 2020, she repeated that feat, winning by an even bigger margin. On Feb. 1, 2021, just hours before she and her fellow lawmakers were supposed to take their seats in parliament, the army arrested Suu Kyi and senior members of her party, including U Win Myint, the then-president, accusing them of committing voter fraud.

In the years since, the country’s pro-democracy movement has moved on beyond Suu Kyi. The military’s reliance on using Suu Kyi as a way to control politics in Myanmar is “outmoded thinking,” said U Khin Zaw Win, director of the Tampadipa Institute, a policy advocacy organization based in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city.

“It may have been credible and possible in the past context, but we are now looking at a vastly changed Myanmar,” he said. “Even if Aung San Suu Kyi is fully released and able to speak, I don’t think she’s going to be a decisive factor anymore.”

Since the coup, Myanmar has convulsed into a state of civil war. In many parts of the country, the military is battling thousands of armed resistance fighters, who are aided by ethnic armies. The junta has also waged an escalating campaign of airstrikes on its civilians that has been condemned by international experts as “crimes against humanity.”

Win Myint also had his prison term cut, by four years, according to the military government spokesperson.

Tuesday’s announcement coincided with a broader release of some 7,000 prisoners, and the Full Moon Day of Waso, a holy day observed in Myanmar marking the start of Buddhist Lent.

In recent months, the junta has come under mounting pressure from other governments to meet with Suu Kyi. Last month, Thailand’s outgoing foreign minister, Don Pramudwinai, said he traveled to Myanmar in secret to meet with Suu Kyi and the country’s military chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.

Before Don’s visit, no public official had seen or heard from Suu Kyi, who has remained incommunicado since her arrest in February 2021.

In June, Suu Kyi’s son, Kim Aris, said that she was being held in isolation. In a video, he called on the junta to consider his mother’s “advancing years” and let her return to the family home in Yangon, where she had spent years under house arrest.

Richard Horsey, a senior adviser on Myanmar for the International Crisis Group, said he did not see the prison term reduction as a response to international pressure. Rather, he said, it was “really about projecting power.”

“The regime is willing to use her for symbolic purposes, but I don’t see many other signs of anything bigger going on,” Horsey said.

On Monday, Myanmar’s military government said it would extend the state of emergency that it has imposed on the country since February 2021 and delay elections that it had promised it would hold in August. It cited the ongoing violence in the country as a reason.