The UK’s foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, is leading a new push to free Myanmar’s former leader Aung San Suu Kyi as sham elections in the country are set to begin.
The Foreign Office (FCDO) has issued a demand for Ms Suu Kyi to be released as the military junta in the country formerly known as Burma attempts to justify its rule with elections, which have excluded most of the opposition.
It comes as the UN has warned the military-controlled ballot is unfolding amid “intensified violence, intimidation and arbitrary arrests, leaving no space for free or meaningful participation”.
No political parties hostile to the junta have been permitted to run, with Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) banned despite landslide victories in 2015 and 2020.
Ms Suu Kyi’s family have not heard from her directly in two years and fear that she may already be dead. The 80-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner has not been seen in public since the coup that overthrew the government in 2021.
The Independent has been told that Ms Cooper is deeply concerned about the situation in the country and Ms Suu Kyi’s ongoing imprisonment.
An FCDO spokesperson told The Independent: “The UK government continues to condemn the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi. The military regime must release her and all those who are arbitrarily detained.
“The UK continues to shine a spotlight on Myanmar, including through our role at the UN Security Council.”
Sean Turnell, Ms Suu Kyi’s former economic policy adviser, spent 650 days in custody after the coup and branded the election “an utter sham.”
“It’s not even close to being a fair election,” he told The Independent. “I wish we were using a different word than ’election’ – a label that conveys nothing about this act of public intimidation that seeks to put lipstick on a particularly grotesque pig.
“The military are planning to stay absolutely in control. It’s very important for the international community right at the get-go to call the election out for what it is. Because this is really nothing but theatre.”
Ms Suu Kyi was sentenced to 33 years in jail after a series of show trials, later reduced to 27 years, and is being held in solitary confinement. A deeply controversial figure after refusing to speak out against her country’s extreme violence against its Rohingya Muslim minority, she is still seen by some as “Myanmar’s one great hope”.
The junta has insisted, without providing evidence, that the former leader “is in good health”, but her family fear the worst.
“She has ongoing health issues,” her son Kim Aris said in a recent interview. “Nobody has seen her in over two years.
