Myanmar’s former leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been moved from prison to house arrest after more than five years in solitary confinement.
The 80-year-old Nobel Peace laureate was removed from power in a 2021 military coup led by newly elected president Min Aung Hlaing, and convicted of a series of charges widely criticised as politically motivated.
Ms Suu Kyi was moved to house arrest after the president commuted her prison term by a sixth as part of an amnesty deal to mark a Buddhist religious holiday. It was the second such reduction in two weeks. after her sentence was commuted by one-sixth on 17 April when another 4,500 prisoners were granted full amnesties to mark the traditional New Year.
Ms Suu Kyi would now serve her remaining term “at the designated residence”.
Her legal team confirmed that she was moved to house arrest on Thursday night. “Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is currently still in Naypyidaw,” a member of the team told Reuters, using an honorific for the former leader, adding that they were meeting her over the weekend to discuss her situation and get her some supplies.
“The situation has shifted,” the legal representative said. “I think it will no longer be just a standard prison visit, but rather a meeting where the legal team will go and discuss matters with her.”
Analysts see the relief for Ms Suu Kyi and amnesty for thousands of her fellow prisoners as a bid by the new Min Aung Hlaing regime to seek broader international acceptance.
Burma Campaign UK said earlier that the slow, staged release of political prisoners was designed to gain maximum positive publicity while at the same time making no fundamental changes or reforms.
"If the Burmese military regime were genuine about reform, they could release all 14,000 political prisoners today," Minn Tent Bo, the group’s advocacy and communications officer, said.
“These people should not have been arrested in the first place. The Burmese military could stop arresting activists and could repeal all repressive laws. They haven't done that."
The decision to commute some of Ms Suu Kyi’s prison term was designed to “receive a positive international response”, the advocacy group said, “whilst at the same time keeping her illegally detained”.
Ms Suu Kyi has spent a total of 20 years in confinement. The past five years have been especially brutal, with even her family unsure of where she was being held.
Her removal from prison will likely see an improvement in her living conditions, but the relief falls far short of the unconditional release long demanded by Western governments and rights groups.
“I hope this is true. I still haven’t seen any real evidence to show that she has been moved. So, until I’m allowed communication with her, or somebody can independently verify her condition and her whereabouts, then I won’t believe anything,” her son Kim Aris told the BBC.
Known in much of Myanmar as “the Lady” and “Mother Suu”, Ms Suu Kyi was once a beacon for human rights who gave up her life in the UK to challenge the military generals after her return from London in 1988.
She founded the National League for Democracy and led it to victory in 2016 in Myanmar's first openly contested election in 25 years.
Her international standing suffered after she defended the military’s treatment of the largely Muslim Rohingya minority but she continued to enjoy strong support among the country’s Buddhist majority.
In 2020, her party secured another landslide victory, winning an even larger share of the vote than in 2015. But the military questioned the election result, which included an abject performance from its preferred party, and ultimately intervened to seize power.
Her journey is documented in a film released by The Independent entitled Cancelled: The rise and fall of Aung San Suu Kyi.
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