Kim Aris delivers letter to Myanmar Embassy demanding access to Aung San Suu Kyi

Jailed Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi’s youngest son, Kim Aris, delivered a personal letter to regime leader Min Aung Hlaing at the Myanmar Embassy in London on Tuesday. He demands to see her in person. “My mother is 81. She remains detained, separated from her family and cut off from the world,” Aris said to a crowd gathered outside the embassy for a rally calling for Aung San Suu Kyi’s unconditional release from detention in Myanmar, where she’s been held since the military coup on Feb. 1, 2021. On Sept. 7, Kim Aris launched a new campaign called “Free Her,” which demands the immediate release of his mother, a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, and one of the co-founders of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party. On Aug. 3, Aung San Suu Kyi met with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) at an undisclosed location in the capital Naypyidaw, where she’s been held incommunicado by the regime for over five years. In April, Aris launched the “Proof of Life” campaign demanding independent verification that his mother was still alive, after news of her reported transfer from Naypyidaw Prison to house arrest. The regime has still not verified that this transfer did, in fact, take place. “Proof of Life was the first step. Family access must be the next. And freedom is the goal,” Aris told the crowd at the rally in London on Sept. 22, adding that he wanted his mother to live the rest of her life in peace. Aung San Suu Kyi is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence after multiple partial commutations, beginning after her original 33-year conviction on multiple charges—called “politically motivated” by her supporters—in 2022. On Sept. 23, Human Rights Watch claimed that more than 6,600 women, including Aung San ​Suu Kyi, have been subjected ​to widespread torture, sexual violence and life-threatening medical neglect during regime detention since the 2021 coup. Aung San Suu Kyi was detained alongside President Win Myint during the 2021 coup. But Win Myint was released in a Myanmar New Year amnesty on April 17. He’s been held under house arrest by the regime, unable to speak to the media. During a regime press conference in Naypyidaw on June 30, spokesperson Khaing Khaing Soe told pro-regime media that Aung San Suu Kyi was “prosecuted and convicted under the law.” DVB has documented that Aung San Suu Kyi has spent nearly 20 years—one quarter of her life—in military detention in Myanmar since 1989. A total of 14,842 individuals remain in detention for political reasons since 2021, according to the Assistance Association of Political Prisoners (AAPP).