Dec 16 (Reuters) – Myanmar’s junta said on Tuesday that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son told Reuters he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing.
In an interview in Tokyo, Kim Aris said that he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held in Myanmar’s capital, Naypyidaw.
Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a 27-year sentence for charges including incitement, corruption and election fraud — all of which she denies.
“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is in good health,” a statement posted on a junta-run Myanmar Digital News said, using an honorific for the former leader. The statement offered no evidence or details about her condition.
Aris could not be immediately reached for comment on the junta’s statement.
He said an upcoming multi-phase election in Myanmar, starting December 28, could offer an opportunity to ease his mother’s plight, though many foreign governments have dismissed the polls as a sham aimed at legitimising military rule.
Aris said he hopes the military might release Suu Kyi or move her to house arrest to appease critics ahead of the vote.
The junta accused Aris of trying to disrupt the election — the first general poll since 2020, when the military accused Suu Kyi of committing fraud.
“This is merely a fabrication, timed and distributed to disrupt the free and fair multi-party democratic general election that will be held in Myanmar in the near future,” the statement said.
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, Myanmar’s largest political party, remains dissolved and several other anti-junta political groups are boycotting the polls.
(Reporting by Reuters staff, editing by Devjyot Ghoshal and Ros Russell)
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