Myanmar's junta has charged Aung San Suu Kyi with influencing election officials during 2020 polls, a source said on Monday, a year after it staged a coup alleging massive voter fraud.
Suu Kyi, 76, has been detained since the February 1 coup last year that triggered mass protests and a bloody crackdown on dissent with more than 1,500 civilians killed, according to a local monitoring group.
The Nobel laureate is facing a raft of charges — including violating the country's official secrets laws — and if convicted of all of them could face sentences tallying more than 100 years in prison.
She will face a further trial on charges of influencing the country's election commission during the 2020 polls that saw her party defeat a military-aligned rival, a source with knowledge of the case said.
The case will be wrapped up within six months, the source added.
Former president and stalwart of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party Win Myint will face the same charge, the source said.
Several senior members of the national electoral commission have also been arrested since the coup, accused of masterminding the NLD's landslide victory.
The junta cancelled the results of the 2020 election in July last year, saying it had found some 11.3 million instances of fraud.
Independent monitors said the polls were largely free and fair.
The junta has promised to hold another election by August 2023 if the country — currently riven by fighting between the military and anti-coup fighters — is restored.
Ahead of the Tuesday anniversary of the putsch, the junta has warned that noisy protests or sharing "propaganda" against the military could be charged with high treason or under the anti-terrorism law.
On Monday ousted Myanmar lawmakers from a shadow "National Unity Government" addressed the media in Paris.
The human rights spokesman Aung Myo Min urged the international community to implement an arms embargo and tighten economic sanctions to cut off all trade with the regime.
Suu Kyi has already been sentenced to six years in jail for illegally importing and owning walkie talkies, incitement against the military and breaking Covid-19 rules.
UN Myanmar investigators probing post-coup 'crimes against humanity'
Geneva (AFP) Jan 31, 2022 –
UN investigators said Monday that more than a thousand people may have been killed in crimes against humanity and war crimes since Myanmar's military coup one year ago.
The United Nations' Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM), charged with collecting evidence of the most serious international crimes, said it was working to substantiate who may be responsible for any crimes committed.
"Tragically, reports received over the last year suggest that well over a thousand individuals have been killed in circumstances that may qualify as crimes against humanity or war crimes," IIMM head Nicholas Koumjian said in a statement.
Myanmar's military seized power on February 1 last year, ousting the civilian government and arresting its de facto leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
The junta has waged a bloody crackdown on dissent.
The UN Human Rights Office says that since the coup, at least 1,500 people have been killed by the military in a brutal effort to crush dissent, while thousands more would have been killed in the wider armed conflict and violence.
"The security forces have detained thousands of civilians in circumstances that include credible allegations of arbitrary detention, torture, sexual violence and even killings while in detention," Koumjian said.
"The Mechanism is working diligently to substantiate and document the facts underlying these reports to establish whether these crimes were committed and if so, who is criminally responsible, and to prepare files that could facilitate prosecutions."
– 'Long memory' of justice –
He said that with thousands of people and organisations sharing evidence, investigators had already gathered lots of relevant material and the file was growing almost daily.
The team "will make every effort to build cases so that their brave contributions to justice in Myanmar are not made in vain", Koumjian said.
The US prosecutor said strong case files could facilitate prosecutions in national and international courts.
"Those who are considering committing crimes should be aware that serious international crimes have no statute of limitations," Koumjian warned.
"International justice has a very long memory and one day the perpetrators of the most serious international crimes in Myanmar will be held to account."
The IIMM was established by the UN Human Rights Council in September 2018 to collect evidence of the most serious international crimes and violations of international law and prepare files for criminal prosecution committed since 2011.
Located in Geneva, it started work in August 2019 and reports annually to the Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly.
Myanmar's Suu Kyi: Prisoner of generals
Yangon (AFP) Feb 1, 2022 –
Myanmar's latest democracy struggle enters its second year with its best-known figurehead, Aung San Suu Kyi, isolated from the fight, a prisoner of the generals behind the coup and facing the rest of her life in prison.
The Nobel laureate has been held since the putsch that ousted her government in the early hours of February 1 last year, ending a brief democratic interlude for the country and sparking huge protests.
Months before, her National League for Democracy (NLD) had swept nationwide elections and she had been preparing to begin another five-year term as the nation's de facto leader.
The daughter of an independence hero, Suu Kyi spent nearly two decades enduring long stretches of house arrest under the former military regime.
She has been jailed by the current junta for six years after being found guilty of illegally importing and possessing walkie-talkies, flouting coronavirus rules and incitement against the military.
She will remain under house arrest as she battles a slew of other charges, including a new trial for allegedly influencing electoral officials during the 2020 polls.
While Suu Kyi remains immensely popular in Myanmar, her legacy abroad was deeply tarnished by her government's handling of the Rohingya crisis.
There was global revulsion at a 2017 military crackdown that saw about 750,000 members of the stateless Rohingya minority flee burning villages to neighbouring Bangladesh.
And for many still fighting in Myanmar, the revolution must now go further than the movement that Suu Kyi led decades ago and permanently root out military dominance of the country's politics and economy.
– Daughter of a hero –
Suu Kyi was born on June 19, 1945, in Japanese-occupied Yangon during the final weeks of World War II.
Her father, Aung San, fought for and against both the British and the Japanese colonisers as he jostled to give his country the best shot at independence, achieved in 1948.
Suu Kyi spent most of her early years outside of Myanmar — first in India, where her mother was an ambassador, and later at Oxford University, where she met her British husband.
After General Ne Win seized full power in 1962, he forced his brand of socialism on Myanmar, turning what was once Asia's rice bowl into one of the world's poorest and most isolated countries.
Suu Kyi's elevation to a democracy champion happened almost by accident when she returned home in 1988 to nurse her dying mother.
Soon afterwards, at least 3,000 people were killed when the military crushed protests against its authoritarian rule.
The bloodshed was the catalyst for Suu Kyi.
A charismatic orator, the then-43-year-old found herself in a leading role of a burgeoning democracy movement, delivering speeches to huge crowds as she led the NLD to a landslide 1990 election victory.
The generals were not prepared to give up power, ignoring the result and confining Suu Kyi to her home in Yangon, where lived for 16 of the next 20 years.
She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while detained in 1991.
The junta offered to end her imprisonment at any time if she left the country for good, but Suu Kyi refused.
That decision meant not seeing her husband before his death from cancer in 1999 and missing her two sons growing up.
– Troubled relationship –
The military eventually granted her freedom in 2010, just days after elections that her party boycotted but which brought a nominally civilian government to power.
She swept the next poll five years later, prompting jubilant celebrations by massive crowds across the country, and increased her party's majority in 2020.
But Suu Kyi's administration was beset with trouble and marked by an uneasy relationship with the military, which maintained a powerful political role.
The government and the military appeared in lockstep after the 2017 Rohingya crackdown, however.
Her office denied claims that fleeing refugees had suffered rape, extrajudicial killings and arson attacks on their homes by Myanmar troops.
Suu Kyi defended the army's conduct and even travelled to The Hague in December 2019 to rebut charges of genocide at the UN's top court.
Weeks later she was its prisoner again, facing the possibility of spending the rest of her life in detention.
