Renewed calls for Aung San Suu Kyi to be released after she completes 20 years ‘buried alive’ in Myanmar detention

Aung San Suu Kyi lived a quiet life in the UK, far removed from Myanmar’s fraught politics, raising two children with her husband. She had no intention of getting into politics even when she returned to her country in 1988 to care for her dying mother. It was only after witnessing the bloody suppression of mass protests by her country’s military rulers that she realised she could not remain on the sidelines.

A year later, in the summer of 1989, she was first arrested by the military government. It was the beginning of a cycle of imprisonments, house arrests and periods of release that would come to define her life.

This week saw Suu Kyi reach a grim milestone – a total of 20 years spent in detention in Myanmar. Her repeated incarcerations, from that first house arrest to her current situation of deep uncertainty, are a testament to the army’s determination to retain control of the country at any cost.

“My mother has spent a cumulative 20 years in military detention for her commitment to a democratic and prosperous Burma,” her son Kim Aris says, using the name for the country that predates the military government’s unilateral decision in 1989 to switch it to Myanmar.

“Today, at 80 years old, she remains in prison, in total isolation, buried alive in a system devoid of transparency and justice.

“Guided by her philosophy of peace and practical steps towards reconciliation, she’s the only figure with the moral authority and popular mandate to bridge the nation’s divides,” Aris tells The Independent. “The military junta must release her as a first step to bringing back peace in Burma.”

The military has seen Suu Kyi, daughter of modern Myanmar’s founding father Aung San, as a threat to its power since she first entered politics.

It was during her first detention that Suu Kyi became a global symbol of peaceful resistance. In 1991, while still under house arrest, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights in the Southeast Asian nation.