The UK’s foreign secretary, Yvette Cooper, is leading a new push to free Myanmar’s former leader Aung San Suu Kyi as sham elections in the country are set to begin.
The Foreign Office (FCDO) has issued a demand for Ms Suu Kyi to be released as the military junta in the country formerly known as Burma attempts to justify its rule with elections, which have excluded most of the opposition.
It comes as the UN has warned the military-controlled ballot is unfolding amid “intensified violence, intimidation and arbitrary arrests, leaving no space for free or meaningful participation”.
No political parties hostile to the junta have been permitted to run, with Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) banned despite landslide victories in 2015 and 2020.
Ms Suu Kyi is serving a 27-year sentence in Naypyidaw, the junta’s remote capital, on charges including alleged corruption, election fraud and several other charges, which have been widely condemned as politically motivated. A lawyer in Bangkok says she recently had dental trouble but did not receive proper medical assistance.
Her family have not heard from her directly in two years and fear that she may already be dead. The 80-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner has not been seen in public since the coup that overthrew the government in 2021.
The Independent has been told that Ms Cooper is deeply concerned about the situation in the country and Ms Suu Kyi’s ongoing imprisonment.
An FCDO spokesperson told The Independent: “The UK government continues to condemn the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi. The military regime must release her and all those who are arbitrarily detained.
“The UK continues to shine a spotlight 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 custody after the coup and branded the election “an utter sham.”
“It’s not even close to being a fair election,” he told The Independent. “I wish we were using a different word than ’election’ – a label that conveys nothing about this act of public intimidation that seeks to put lipstick on a particularly grotesque pig.
“The military are planning to stay absolutely in control. It’s very important for the international community right at the get-go to call the election out for what it is. Because this is really nothing but theatre.”
Ms Suu Kyi was sentenced to 33 years in jail after a series of show trials, later reduced to 27 years, and is being held in solitary confinement. A deeply controversial figure after refusing to speak out against her country’s extreme violence against its Rohingya Muslim minority, she is still seen by some as “Myanmar’s one great hope”.
The junta has insisted, without providing evidence, that the former leader “is in good health”, but her family fear the worst.
“She has ongoing health issues,” her son Kim Aris said in a recent interview. “Nobody has seen her in over two years.
“She hasn’t been allowed contact with the legal team, let alone the family. For all I know, she could be dead already. I don’t think she would consider these elections to be meaningful in any way.”
The first phase of the vote, scheduled for 28 December, comes amid a climate of armed conflict, mass displacement and economic collapse, the UN said.
Since 18 August, when the junta announced the election dates, at least 862 airstrikes have been conducted in 121 townships. Most recently, a hospital in Rakhine state was bombed, killing more than 30 people, while 18 more were killed when bombs fell on a teashop in the central Sagaing region while they were watching a football match.
The official election map shows large areas in the east, west and north where no polls will be held, while the entire map is dotted with large expanses where, the junta claims, “elections will take place at a later date”.
“These elections are clearly taking place in an environment of violence and repression,” the UN’s high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk, warned this week. “There are no conditions for the exercise of the rights of freedom of expression, association or peaceful assembly.”
Thousands of opponents were jailed after the coup, all protests have been criminalised, and dissenters face harsh punishment.
Three young artists in Yangon who put up anti-election posters were sentenced to 42 and 49 years. Elsewhere, a man who tore down a candidate list was jailed for 17 years.
A young man called Ko Nay Thway, in the city of Taunggyi, wrote on Facebook: “If [the junta] want the votes from the people, [they should] think of serving the people”. In response, he was sentenced to seven years under the new Election Protection Law.
Hanthar Nyein, a Myanmar journalist released after four years in jail in Yangon, said: “The military has just three ways of getting and remaining in power: seizing power in a coup, establishing an appearance of legitimacy through a fake party, then ruling permanently from behind the scenes using a puppet parliament.
“The 2008 constitution states that the army must play the leading role in national politics. The army claims that only its ‘guardianship’ prevents the nation, with its numerous ethnic minorities, from disintegrating.”
Critics argue it is military rule itself which has shattered the nation.
Sir John Jenkins, a former UK ambassador to Myanmar, told The Independent: “The generals may think they can solidify their tyranny on the back of a rigged win and perhaps even pretend to be magnanimous in the phoney aftermath.
“I wish it could be an opportunity for international actors to refocus on what matters: justice for all the people of Burma. I’m not holding my breath.”