Burma: Aung San Suu Kyi sentenced for corruption to six additional years in prison – Le Figaro

The former Burmese leader, already sentenced to eleven years in prison, has been charged with a multitude of offenses by the junta in power since the February 2021 coup. The Burmese junta is tightening its grip on Aung San Suu Kyi : the former leader was sentenced Monday to an additional six years in prison during a river trial, denounced as political by the international community. The 77-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner, who had previously been sentenced to a total of 11 years in prison, was found guilty of four corruption charges. Appeared in good health at the military court, according to a source familiar with the matter, she did not comment after the reading of the judgment. It is an “affront to justice and the rule of law”, reacted a spokesman for the US State Department, calling for the “immediate release of Aung San Suu Kyi and all those unjustly detained, including democratically elected representatives.” The head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, for his part, denounced the “unjust” condemnation by the Burmese junta of Aung San Suu Kyi and called in a tweet on the Burmese regime “to release her immediately and unconditionally, as well as all political prisoners, and to respect the popular will”. Arrested during the military coup of February 1, 2021, Aung San Suu Kyi was placed in solitary confinement in a prison in Naypyidaw at the end of June. It is in this penitentiary establishment in the capital that her trial, which began more than a year ago, behind closed doors. Her lawyers are also prohibited from speaking to the press and to international organizations. She is targeted by a multitude of offences: violation of a law on state secrets dating from the colonial era, electoral fraud, sedition, corruption. .. She faces decades in prison. At the end of April, the Nobel laureate was sentenced to five years in prison under the anti-corruption law, for having received 600,000 dollars and more than eleven kilos of gold in bribes. wine of the former minister in charge of the Yangon region. Disputed figure She had previously been tried for illegal importation and possession of walkie-talkies, violation of coronavirus restrictions and incitement to public unrest. “Deaf to national outrage and international law, the trials to punish Suu Kyi and those close to her are intended to erase Burma’s democratic past,” political analyst David Mathieson told AFP. “Their intention is clear to everyone except for the common international auty”, the sanctions of which are considered too light by some observers, he continued. Many voices denounce a judicial harassment motivated, according to them, by political considerations: to permanently touch the daughter of the hero of independence and big winner of the 2015 and 2020 elections. Several of his relatives were sentenced to heavy sentences: 75 years in prison for a former minister, 20 years for one of his collaborators. A former member of his party sentenced to death, Phyo Zeya Thaw, was executed at the end of July. Others went into exile or went into hiding. Some of these elected officials have formed a “national unity government” (NUG) but it does not control any territory, and has not been recognized by any foreign government. Aung San Suu Kyi remains a very popular figure in Burma , even if its international image has been tarnished by its inability to defend the Muslim minority of the Rohingyas, victims of abuses by the army in 2016 and 2017 – a “genocide” according to Washington. Special Asean for Burma, mandated to find a way out of the crisis, was not allowed to meet her during her most recent visit at the end of June. The army in power defends its plan to organize elections in the summer of 2023. The United States has already rejected this “sham” of elections which cannot be “neither free nor fair under present conditions”, according to Secretary of State Antony Blinken. increasingly isolated on the international scene, seized power by force under the pretext of pr extensive fraud in the previous year’s elections, won overwhelmingly by Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, ending a decade of democratic transition. The putsch plunged the country into chaos. Nearly 2,100 civilians were killed by the security forces and more than 15,000 arrested, according to a local NGO. SEE ALSO – Conviction of Aung San Suu Kyi: Washington denounces an “affront to justice”