Suu Kyi’s son fears she may already have died in jail

Aung San Suu Kyi’s son has voiced grave fears for his mother’s life, saying he has had no direct contact with her for years and cannot be sure she is still alive. Speaking to Reuters in Tokyo, Kim Aris said the 80‑year‑old former Myanmar leader has been held in total isolation since the 2021 military coup, with only fragmentary reports emerging about her declining health.

Aris said he has received occasional second‑hand updates suggesting heart, bone and dental problems, but nothing that confirms her current condition. “No one has seen her for more than two years,” he said. “For all I know, she could already be dead.” Suu Kyi has been barred from meeting her lawyers or family since her arrest, and the junta has released no recent images or statements from her.

Despite rejecting the military’s plan to stage elections later this month — widely dismissed abroad as an attempt to legitimise the junta — Aris believes the process might create a narrow opening for his mother’s situation to improve. He suggested the junta chief, Min Aung Hlaing, could try to use Suu Kyi as a political tool, perhaps by moving her to house arrest or releasing her to ease public anger.

Suu Kyi is serving a 27‑year sentence on charges ranging from corruption to electoral fraud, all of which she denies. Aris believes she is being held in Naypyitaw, where her last letter to him described extreme temperatures in her cell. Myanmar has been engulfed in conflict since the coup, with resistance forces seizing territory across the country.

Aris fears the world is turning away as global crises multiply. With Myanmar’s first post‑coup elections due to begin on 28 December, he is urging foreign governments — including Japan’s — to increase pressure on the junta and demand his mother’s release. He called the planned vote “so far from free and fair that it would be laughable if it weren’t so tragic”.

Suu Kyi’s international standing collapsed after the Rohingya crisis, but Aris insists she was not complicit in what the UN labelled a genocidal campaign. He argues that Myanmar’s constitution left her with limited control over the military, even when she was the country’s de facto leader.

Asked what his mother would think of his activism, Aris said she would be saddened that he has been forced into the spotlight. “She always wanted me to stay out of it,” he said. “But I don’t really have a choice. I’m her son. If I don’t do this, I can’t expect anyone else to.”

-2025-12-17