Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Nearly a year after the military junta ousted her democratically elected government in Myanmar, a kangaroo court convicted Nobel Peace Awardee Aung San Suu Kyi in a fresh sentence of four years in prison—for possessing a walkie talkie!
The walkie-talkie charges stem from when soldiers raided her house on the day of the coup, February 1, 2021, allegedly discovering the contraband equipment, according to the media reports on Monday.
The court of the military junta, which foisted several cases against Suu Kyi, 76, and her democracy-demanding aides, found her guilty of three trumped-up criminal charges and sentenced her to four years in prison.
In December, the junta had not allowed the visiting Indian Foreign Secretary, Harsh Vardhan Shringla, to meet the deposed leader.
They detained the Nobel laureate on February 1, 2021, when the junta ousted her government and arrested many of her supporters and leaders in an early morning coup, ending Myanmar’s short-lived experiment with democracy.
Ever since the pro-democratic Myanmar people have been protesting against the military rulers’ highhandedness.
The army’s power grab sparked widespread dissent, which security forces tried to quell with mass detentions and bloody crackdowns in which over 1,400 civilians have been killed, a local monitoring group said.
According to the media reports, they found Suu Kyi guilty of two charges related to illegally importing and owning walkie-talkies and one of breaking coronavirus rules.
Junta spokesperson Major General Zaw Min Tun confirmed the verdicts and sentences, adding the leader would remain under house arrest while other cases against her proceeded.
Monday’s sentence adds to the penalties the court handed down in December when she was jailed for four years for incitement and breaching Covid-19 rules while campaigning during elections. Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing cut the sentence to two years and said she could serve her term under house arrest in the national capital Naypyidaw.
Last month’s ruling drew global opprobrium while the Myanmar masses protested against the rulers by banging pots and pans in a show of anger.
The military rulers have banned journalists from attending court case hearings, while Suu Kyi’s lawyers have been muzzled from speaking to the media.
Under a previous junta regime, Suu Kyi spent long spells under house arrest in her family mansion in Yangon, Myanmar’s largest city.
At present, they confined her to an undisclosed location in the capital, with her link to the outside world limited to brief pre-trial meetings with her lawyers.
Apart from Monday’s cases, she is also facing multiple counts of corruption — each of which is punishable by 15 years in jail — and of violating the official secrets act.
In November 2021, she and 15 other officials, including Myanmar’s President Win Myint, were also charged with alleged electoral fraud during the 2020 polls.
Her National League for Democracy party had swept the elections in a landslide, trouncing a military-aligned party by a wider margin than the previous 2015 election.
Since the coup, many of her political allies have been arrested, with one chief minister sentenced to 75 years in jail. Others are in hiding, the media reported.