From behind bars, Aung San Suu Kyi casts a long shadow over Myanmar

From behind bars, Aung San Suu Kyi casts a long shadow over Myanmar As of Wednesday the Burmese democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi will have spent a total of 20 years in detention in Myanmar, five of them since her government was overthrown by a military coup in February 2021. Aung San Suu Kyi was ousted from office and arrested in 2021, after the military sized power Almost nothing is known about her state of health, or the conditions she is living in, although she is presumed to be held in a military prison in the capital Nay Pyi Taw. "For all I know she could be dead," her son Kim Aris said last month, although a spokesman for the ruling military junta insisted she is in good health. She has not seen her lawyers for at least two years, nor is she known to have seen anyone else except prison personnel. After the coup she was given jail sentences totalling 27 years on what are widely viewed as fabricated charges. Yet despite her disappearance from public view, she still casts a long shadow over Myanmar. There are repeated calls for her release, along with appeals to the generals to end their ruinous campaign against the armed opposition and negotiate an end to the civil war that has now dragged on for five years. The military has tried to remove her once ubiquitous image, but you still see faded posters of "The Lady", or "Amay Su", Mother Su, as she is affectionately known, in tucked away corners. Could she still play a role in settling the conflict between the soldiers and the people of Myanmar? After all, it has happened before. Back in 2010 the military had been in power for nearly 50 years, brutally crushed all opposition and run the economy into the ground. Just as it is doing now, it organised a general election which excluded Aung San Suu Kyi's popular National League for Democracy, and which it ensured its own proxy party, the USDP, would win. As with this election, which is still under way in phases, the one in 2010 was dismissed by most countries as a sham. Yet at the end of that year Aung San Suu Kyi was released, and within 18 months she had been elected an MP. By 2015 her party had won the first free election since 1960, and she was de facto leader of the country. To the outside world it seemed an almost miraculous democratic transition, evidence perhaps that among the stony-faced generals there might be genuine reformers. So could we see a re-run of that scenario once the junta has completed its three-stage election at the end of this month? A lot has changed between then and now. Back then there had been many years of engagement between the generals and an assortment of UN envoys, exploring ways to end their pariah status and re-engage with the rest of the world. It was a more optimistic era;...

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