Yvette Cooper leads push to free Aung San Suu Kyi as Myanmar elections begin
British foreign secretary Yvette Cooper is leading a new push to free Myanmar’s former leader Aung San Suu Kyi as the country prepares to begin mock elections.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (FCDO) requested the release of Ms. Suu Kyi because the military junta in the country formerly known as Burma is trying to legitimize its rule with elections that exclude most of the opposition.
It came as the UN warned that the military-controlled vote was taking place “amid intense violence, intimidation and arbitrary arrests, leaving no space for free or meaningful participation”.
With Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) banned despite landslide victories in 2015 and 2020, no political party hostile to the junta was allowed to run.
Ms. Suu Kyi’s family has not heard from her directly for two years and fears she may already be dead. The 80-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner has not been seen in public since the coup that toppled the government in 2021.
Independent Ms Cooper was said to be deeply concerned about the situation in the country and Ms Suu Kyi’s ongoing imprisonment.
An FCDO spokesperson said: Independent: “The UK government continues to condemn the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi. The military regime must release her and everyone else arbitrarily detained.
“The UK continues to shine a light 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 detention after the coup and called the election “a complete lie”.
“We are not even close to being a fair election,” he said Independent. “I wish we were using a different word than ‘election,’ a label that conveys nothing about this act of public intimidation aimed at putting lipstick on a particularly peculiar pig.
“The army plans to keep full control. It is very important that the international community announces the elections as they are from the very beginning, because this is actually nothing more than theater.”
Ms. Suu Kyi was sentenced to 33 years in prison after a series of show trials, which was later reduced to 27 years, and is currently being held in solitary confinement. A highly controversial figure after refusing to speak out against his country’s extreme violence against the Rohingya Muslim minority, he is still seen by some as “Myanmar’s only great hope”.
The junta has insisted, without providing any evidence, that the former leader is in “good health”, but his family fears the worst.
“He has ongoing health issues,” his son Kim Aris said in a recent interview. “No one has seen him for two years.
“He wasn’t allowed to meet with his legal team, let alone the family. He may already be dead for all I know. I don’t think he would think these choices were meaningful in any way.”
The UN said the first phase of the vote, scheduled for December 28, took place against a backdrop of armed conflict, mass displacement and economic collapse.
At least 862 air strikes have been carried out in 121 districts since August 18, when the junta announced the election dates. Most recently, more than 30 people lost their lives as a result of the bombing of a hospital in Rakhine state, while 18 more people died when a bomb fell on a teahouse in the central Sagaing region while they were watching a football match.
While the official election map shows large areas in the east, west and north where polls will not be held, the entire map is dotted with large areas where the junta claims “elections will be held at a later date.”
“These elections are clearly taking place in an environment of violence and repression,” Volker Turk, the UN high commissioner for human rights, warned this week. “There are no conditions for the exercise of the rights to freedom of expression, association and peaceful assembly.”
After the coup, thousands of dissidents were imprisoned, all protests were criminalized and dissidents faced heavy penalties.
Three young artists who hung anti-election posters in Yangon were sentenced to 42 and 49 years in prison. Elsewhere, a man who tore up a list of candidates was sentenced to 17 years in prison.
A young man named Ko Nay Thway in the city of Taunggyi wrote on Facebook: “If [the junta] He asks for votes from the public. [they should] Think about serving the public.” He was then sentenced to seven years in prison under the new Election Protection Law.
Myanmar journalist Hanthar Nyein, who was released after four years in prison in Yangon, said: “There are only three ways the military can come to power and stay in power: seizing power through a coup, creating the appearance of legitimacy through a fake party, then ruling permanently from behind the scenes using a puppet parliament.
“The 2008 constitution states that the military should play a leading role in national politics. The military claims that only its ‘tutelage’ prevents the disintegration of the nation with numerous ethnic minorities.”
Critics argue that it was military rule itself that tore the nation apart.
Sir John Jenkins, former British ambassador to Myanmar, said: Independent: “Generals may think they can consolidate their tyranny after a fraudulent victory, and perhaps even pretend to be generous in the fake aftermath.
“I hope international actors will refocus on what is important: justice for all Burmese people. I am not holding my breath.”
