Former Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, overthrown by the army in February, is expected to receive the verdict on Tuesday (November 30th) in her trial for incitement to public disturbance, the first in a long series of legal proceedings that could lead her to prison for decades.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been under house arrest since the February 1 military putsch which put an abrupt end to the democratic transition underway in the country since 2010.
In this part of his trial, Aung San Suu Kyi, 76, faces three years of detention. But several analysts interviewed by AFP believe that it is unlikely that she will be taken to prison on Tuesday. According to them, the junta court could postpone its verdict. He could also decide to commute a possible prison sentence to house arrest, a way to justify the sidelining of the former leader, cut off from the world for ten months. His only links with the outside world are limited to his meetings with his team of lawyers.
Aung San Suu Kyi has been on trial since June for a multitude of offenses - illegal importation of walkie-talkies, non-compliance with restrictions linked to the coronavirus pandemic, sedition, corruption, electoral fraud ... Many observers denounce a political trial in order to neutralize the winner of the 2015 and 2020 elections. The former leader, in good health according to her lawyers, risks long years in prison if she is found guilty.
"It is almost certain that in the end Suu Kyi will be sentenced to a severe sentence
,
"
said analyst David Mathieson, an expert on Burma.
"The question is to know what her incarceration will look like (...) Will she be treated like an ordinary detainee in a crowded cell or with privileges in a VIP villa?"
The media are not allowed to attend his trial, behind closed doors, in a special court in the capital Naypyidaw. The junta also banned its legal team from speaking to the press and international organizations. The courtroom
"will remain closed to journalists"
when the verdict is delivered, junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun told AFP. During his first court appearance, Aung San Suu Kyi sent a message of defiance to the generals, swearing that his party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), would endure and asking his followers to stand united.
In recent weeks, the junta courts have handed down very severe sentences against other prominent members of the NLD. A former lawmaker was sentenced to 75 years in prison for corruption - a sentence including hard labor, and a close associate of 80-year-old Suu Kyi, to 20 years. A former LND deputy, Maung Kyaw, a famous hip-hop artist, was recently arrested on charges of instigating attacks against the regime.
The generals are continuing a bloody crackdown on their opponents with nearly 1,300 civilians killed in recent months and more than 7,000 in detention, according to a local NGO, the Association for Assistance to Political Prisoners (AAPP), which reports cases of torture, rape and extrajudicial killings. They justified their putsch by ensuring that they discovered more than 11 million irregularities during the November 2020 elections, won overwhelmingly by the NLD. International observers, for their part, at the time described the ballot as
“generally free and fair”
.
Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing threatened to dissolve the NLD and assured that new elections would be held by August 2023. Since the putsch, many party members have been arrested, gone into hiding or fled the country.
Some have set up a shadow government of resistance, the government of national unity.
Dozens of citizen militias, known as the “People's Defense Forces”, have formed across the country, in the midst of political and economic chaos since the coup.
Objective: to carry out guerrilla operations against the junta and its allies.
Yangon, the economic capital, is the scene of very frequent bombings and shootings.
