Aung San Suu Kyi sentenced to another six years in prison for corruption by the military junta

Aung San Suu Kyi’s river trial continues. The former head of the Burmese government, overthrown by the military coup of February 2021, was sentenced on Wednesday to six additional years in prison for corruption. She was convicted of accepting $550,000 in bribes from a local businessman, Maung Weik, who confessed in a video broadcast on a state broadcaster last year. Maung Weik explained that he gave this sum over several years to officials of the National League for Democracy, the party of Aung San Suu Kyi, in the hope of making his business prosper.

Arrested at the time of the putsch, which ended a decade of democratic transition in Burma, the ousted leader was placed in solitary confinement in a prison in Naypyidaw at the end of June, from where her trial denounced by the international community, started there more than a year ago, continues behind closed doors. She had already been sentenced to 23 years in prison on various charges, including electoral fraud and corruption, and will spend three more behind bars, her sentence consisting of “two three-year prison terms” which were combined .

The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, aged 77, faces a total of more than 120 years in prison. Many voices denounce a judicial harassment which would be based on political motives, with the aim of definitively removing the daughter of the hero of independence, big winner of the 2015 and 2020 elections. The junta defends itself from these accusations and promises even to open negotiations with Aung San Suu Kyi once her trial is over.