Global Courant
YANGON — The Supreme Court in military-ruled Myanmar will hear an appeal this week from former leader Aung San Suu Kyi against two of her convictions, a source familiar with the case said Monday, as the Nobel laureate seeks to serve her 33 years in jail. the prison.
The 78-year-old has been convicted of a laundry list of crimes, from sedition and electoral fraud to multiple counts of corruption since the military arrested her during a February 2021 coup against her elected government.
Suu Kyi’s allies and Western governments have condemned her imprisonment as a play by the junta to prevent the return of the popular figurehead of Myanmar’s decades-long struggle for democracy.
The Supreme Court has announced that it will hear an appeal on Wednesday against Ms Suu Kyi’s conviction for violation of the Official Secrets and Election Fraud Act.
The source, who declined to be identified due to sensitivities about her cases, said a decision could take up to two months.
A spokesman for the junta was not immediately available for confirmation.
The military is insisting that defendants receive a fair trial by an independent judiciary, countering criticism by human rights groups of the imprisonment of several members of the pro-democracy movement in secret trials and the resumption of executions after a decades-long hiatus.
Myanmar has been embroiled in conflict since the military seized power over unaddressed electoral irregularities in November 2020 that swept Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party in a landslide.
The NLD denied fraud and has since been disbanded along with 39 other parties for failing to register for an election for which the generals have not yet set a date.
Activists have urged the junta not to hold the elections, and warned of an intensification of bloody violence between the army and a pro-democracy resistance movement. REUTERS
