Myanmar’s Suu Kyi sentenced to 6 more years in jail

ISTANBUL

A junta court on Monday sentenced Myanmar’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to six more years in jail.

The court in Naypyitaw convicted the incarcerated leader on four counts of corruption charges, Myanmar Now website reported.

Suu Kyi, 77, was accused of “abusing her position as party leader to benefit a private foundation named after her mother, Daw Khin Kyi, as well as an affiliated project.”

The military regime said Suu Kyi used “her influence to enable the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation to lease land for its headquarters in Yangon’s Bahan Township at below-market rates, costing the country 5.2 billion kyats ($3.16 million) in revenue.”

With the latest ruling, Suu Kyi has been sentenced to 17 years of imprisonment since the military overthrew her government last year in February.

She was convicted for six other charges in December, January and April.

In June, the military regime moved her to prison and placed her in solitary confinement.

After her ouster in a military coup in February last year, Suu Kyi was under house arrest until April this year when she was shifted to an unknown place but believed to be in Naypyitaw Prison in Myanmar’s capital.

She is fighting over a dozen charges, including corruption for which she was sentenced to five years in prison in April.

Suu Kyi has earlier spent around 15 years under house arrest during different junta regimes in the Buddhist-majority nation.

It is the second time since 2009 that Suu Kyi has been held in prison. Earlier that year, the then-junta regime had shifted her to Yangon’s Insein Prison for four months for “violating the rules of her house arrest.”

Suu Kyi’s government was deposed in a military coup last year after it swept the November 2020 national elections.

The coup was met by mass civil unrest as people protested Suu Kyi’s ouster and the restoration of military rule. The junta cracked down violently on protests as the UN repeatedly warned the country had descended into a civil war.

The junta forces have since killed more than 1,500 people in a crackdown on dissent, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a local monitoring group.