Photo: REUTERS / Deutsche Welle
The 76 Nobel Peace Prize winner has already been sentenced to six years imprisonment for incitement against the military, violating the rules against COVID-19 and contravening a law of telecommunications, although he will remain under house arrest while facing other charges.
In the case decided this Wednesday (30.04.2022), Aung San Suu Kyi was accused of accepting a bribe from 80. dollars in cash and gold bullion. After two days of delays, a special court in the capital built by the military dictatorship, Naypyidaw, released its verdict and sentence.
“ In connection with accepting gold and dollars from U Phyo Min Thein, the court sentences him to five years in prison,” board spokesman Zaw Min Tun told AFP. “She will remain under house arrest. I don’t know if she asked to appeal, they are working legally. As far as I know she is in good health”, he added.
No press and with pending accusations
Journalists do not They have been able to access the trials against the Burmese civil leader, her lawyers are not allowed to speak to the media and a wide series of accusations of violation of the secret law, corruption and electoral fraud, among others, which may lead to a global sentence to more than one hundred years in prison.
In March, Suu Kyi had to miss three days of hearings because she was in quarantine due to a contagion of COVID-19 among your staff. Under a previous military junta, Suu Kyi spent long periods under house arrest at her family’s mansion in Rangoon, Burma’s largest city.
Currently She remains detained in an undisclosed location in the capital, and her contact with the outside world is limited to her brief meetings with her lawyers before the trials.
Locked up, again, the democratic hope of Burma
Suu Kyi has been the face of Burma’s democratic hopes for over 75 years, but his previous six-year sentence would prevent him from participating in the elections that the board says it will hold next year.
Independent Myanmar analyst David Mathieson said the board uses criminal trials to make Suu Kyi “politically irrelevant”: “This is another feeble attempt to entrench the coup,” he told AFP.
military board status The tar that currently rules Burma sparked protests and turmoil across the country, which the military put down by force. Since the coup, more than 1.675 people have died and more than 04. were arrested in the crackdown on dissidents, according to a local monitoring group.
The rebels grow and the investors leave
Many other political allies of Suu Kyi have also been arrested since the coup, including a chief minister sentenced to 75 years in prison, while others remain hidden. Throughout the country, several “Popular Defense Forces” (FDP) have been formed, civil militias that seek to combat the junta.
Analysts they point out that the heavily armed and well-trained Burmese army has been surprised by the effectiveness of the PDF and in some areas is struggling to contain it.
The chaos in Burma since the coup has scared away foreign investors, who arrived in the country at the beginning of the democratic period, around 2011. Energy giants TotalEnergies and Chevron, as well as British American Tobacco and Japanese brewery Kirin have announced withdrawal plans.
rml (afp, ap, kna)