Jailed Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi is this year’s recipient of the Citizen of Burma Award, which has been bestowed upon a citizen of Myanmar every year since 2010 by the U.S.-based organization of the same name.
“This year our goal is to express respect and to honor the civilian leader [Aung San Suu Kyi] who has been held in prison,” Kyaw Wanna, the founder of the Citizen of Burma Award, told DVB.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s son Kim Aris was invited to accept the Citizen of Burma Award on behalf of his mother, who has been held incommunicado in Naypyidaw since the military coup on Feb. 1, 2021.
She is serving a 27-year prison sentence after being convicted of corruption, and several other charges, in what has been called a “politically motivated” trial in a regime court.
Kim Aris launched the “Suu 80th Birthday Campaign” in February to raise awareness about his mother’s upcoming 8oth birthday on June 19. He spent the last two months on a tour of the U.S., where he visited seven states and met with more than 5,000 members of the Myanmar diaspora.
“The warmth, kindness, and generosity I’ve experienced has moved me beyond words. I have witnessed firsthand the unshakable love of people for our motherland and their commitment to seeing freedom and justice return to Burma,” Aris shared in a video on social media on April 25.
Aris met with several U.S. government officials, Australian economist and former National League for Democracy (NLD) economic advisor Sean Turnell, as well as ministers and officials from Myanmar’s National Unity Government (NUG) currently in exile in the U.S.
“Even though I don’t get involved with politics, I’ve had to step up over the last four years to try and do what I can to help her,” Kim Aris told KQED in San Francisco about his mother’s predicament over the last four years since the coup.
“We just want her free. She wants all the political prisoners free as well, and she wouldn’t accept her freedom before their freedom,” he added.
Aris announced on his social media that the “Suu 80th birthday campaign” has raised more than $400,000 USD, which will be used to deliver critical aid to survivors of the March 28 earthquake and for rehabilitation of civilians who have faced attacks by the regime.
Its forces have carried out 349 air and artillery attacks that have killed 264 people and injured 529 since March 28, according to DVB data.
Aris founded AID2Burma in 2021 following the coup in order to raise funds for humanitarian assistance to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and refugees in Myanmar. The U.N. states that there are over 3.5 million IDPs nationwide.
To date, Aid2Burma has provided rice, edible oil, medicine, food and drinking water, as well as baby formula, to 1,000 families living in central Myanmar who survived last month’s earthquake.
Kyaw Wunna told DVB that he hopes Aris will accept the Citizen of Burma Award on behalf of his mother, Aung San Suu Kyi, at the ceremony in Houston, Texas on May 24.
He added that NUG Foreign Minister Zin Mar Aung, Deputy Human Rights Minister Aung Kyaw Moe, and the previous recipient of the Citizen of Burma Award Permanent Representative of Myanmar to the U.N. Kyaw Moe Tun, will attend the ceremony. Winners of the Citizen of Burma Award each receive $10,000 USD.
