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Aung San Suu Kyi’s son launches campaign calling for her release from prison ahead of 80th birthday

Aung San Suu Kyi’s son Kim Aris announced on Wednesday that he has launched a campaign leading up to her 80th birthday on June 19 to call for her release from prison in Naypyidaw, where she’s been held by the regime since the Feb. 1, 2021 military coup.

“Being on social media allows me to more effectively carry out humanitarian work for Myanmar. So, I will frequently post updates, including the dishes I cook,” Kim Aris shared on his social media account. 

Aris told DVB in an interview last year that his mother is suffering from health issues in prison that are being neglected by the regime authorities, and that he sent her a care package which was received.

“She basically responded to my letter, sending love to the family and thanking me for what was in the care package,” Aris told DVB in 2024. “She said she’s still got problems with a molar, which is preventing her from being able to eat without considerable pain.”

Aung San Suu Kyi’s legal team has not been allowed to meet with her in Naypyidaw since December 2022, highlighting that the regime has cut off all communication between her and the outside world for the last three years. 

Myanmar’s jailed State Counsellor and National League for Democracy (NLD) party leader is serving a 27-year prison sentence.

Last month, three former U.K. foreign secretaries, William Hague, Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw, spoke out against her detention and stepped up efforts to advocate for her release in a documentary film by The Independent newspaper on Dec. 20. 

Another notable figure to join the calls for Aung San Suu Kyi’s release is Toru Kubota, a Japanese filmmaker who was arrested and spent three months at Yangon’s Insein Prison in 2022 with Aung San Suu Kyi’s former economic advisor Sean Turnell. 

“As someone who began connecting with Myanmar through the eyes of the Rohingya, there’s an unsettling feeling when I see how people continue to idolize her even after the coup,” Kubota told The Independent.

Kubota added that he hoped for her earliest release, along with the more than 20,000 political prisoners held by the regime in Myanmar.

Aung San Suu Kyi lost most of her international support after she failed to speak out on behalf of the Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim ethnic nationality, in Arakan (Rakhine) State during a military crackdown against them in 2016-17. 

She went on to defend the military at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) during a genocide case brought against Myanmar by The Gambia in 2019. But her popularity inside Myanmar has never waned. 

This was evident by the strong backlash netizens in Myanmar had to a celebrity’s alleged mockery of Aung San Suu Kyi’s image in a now-removed muscle relaxant balm advertisement shared online last month.

Under previous regimes, Aung San Suu Kyi spent nearly 15 years under house arrest between 1989 and 2010. She is currently undergoing her fourth period of detention by the military, bringing her total time in detention to 19 years since 1989.  

She is one of the 21,548 political prisoners still being detained by the regime in Myanmar, following the 2021 coup, as documented by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

On Myanmar’s 77th Independence Day on Jan. 4, the regime released over 6,000 prisoners, but Aung San Suu Kyi was not among them. Only about 344 political prisoners were included in the amnesty, according to the Political Prisoners Network Myanmar.

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