Aung San Suu Kyi has not seen her lawyers for two years. It's unknown if she's alive

Photo: Sirachai Arunrugstichai/Getty Images

Almost nothing is known about her health or the conditions of her detention, although it is believed she is in a military prison in the capital, Naypyidaw.

“As far as I know, she may have already died,” her son Kim Aris said last month, however, a spokesperson for the ruling military junta insists she is in good health.

She has not seen her lawyers for at least two years and, as far as is known, has had no contact with anyone other than prison staff.

Following the coup, she was handed prison sentences totaling 27 years on charges widely considered fabricated.

Nevertheless, despite her disappearance from the public eye, she continues to cast a long shadow over Myanmar.

There are constant calls for her release, as well as appeals to the generals to halt their destructive campaign against the armed opposition and begin negotiations to end the five-year civil war.

The military has tried to erase her once ubiquitous image, but even now, in quiet corners, one can still see faded posters of "The Lady" or "Amay Suu" — Mother Suu, as she is affectionately known. Can she still play a role today in resolving the conflict between the soldiers and the people of Myanmar?

After all, this has happened before. Back in 2010, the military had been in power for almost 50 years, brutally suppressing all opposition and driving the economy into decline. As now, they organized general elections from which Aung San Suu Kyi's popular party — the National League for Democracy — was excluded, and ensured victory in advance for their own pro-government party — the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP).

Like these elections, which are still being held in stages, the 2010 elections were widely considered by most countries to be a sham. Nevertheless, at the end of that same year, Aung San Suu Kyi was released, and within 18 months, she was elected to parliament. By 2015, her party had won the first free elections since 1960, and she became the de facto leader of the country.

To the outside world, it looked almost like a miracle — a democratic transition that perhaps indicated that genuine reformers still existed among the hard-line generals.

So, can such a scenario be expected to repeat itself after the junta completes its three-stage elections at the end of this month?

Much has changed since then. At that time, for many years, there was interaction between the generals and various UN envoys who sought ways for the country to emerge from isolation and return to cooperation with the rest of the world. It was a more optimistic era: the generals saw their neighbors in Southeast Asia prospering through trade with the West, and they sought to shed the suffocating economic sanctions.

They also wanted to improve relations with the United States as a counterbalance to their dependence on China, at a time when the Obama administration was implementing its famous "pivot to Asia."

The senior military leadership remained rigid and suspicious, but among lower-ranking officers, there was a group willing to explore possibilities for political compromise.

It is not precisely known what ultimately convinced the military leadership to open up the country, but it is clear they believed that the 2008 constitution, which guaranteed the armed forces a quarter of the seats in the future parliament, combined with their well-funded party, would be sufficient to limit Aung San Suu Kyi's influence after her release.

They made a grave mistake, underestimating her immense popularity, as well as the extent to which decades of poor governance had alienated the majority of the population from them.

In the 2015 elections, the USDP party won just over 6% of the seats in both houses of parliament. In the subsequent 2020 elections, it hoped for a much better result after five years of National League for Democracy rule, which began with incredibly high hopes but inevitably disappointed many. However, the USDP performed even worse, securing only 5% of the seats in both houses.

Even many of those who were dissatisfied with Aung San Suu Kyi's performance as head of government still preferred her over the military party. This created the possibility that over time, she could garner enough support to change the constitution and eliminate the military's privileged position.

This also dashed the hopes of the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, Min Aung Hlaing, to become president after his retirement.

He staged the coup on February 1, 2021 — the day Aung San Suu Kyi was supposed to inaugurate the new government.

Now there are no reformers within the military ranks and no hope for a compromise similar to the one that brought back democracy in 2010. The shocking violence used to suppress protests against the coup has forced many young Burmese to take up arms against the junta. Tens of thousands of people have died, and tens of thousands of homes have been destroyed. The positions of both sides have significantly hardened.

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