SpaceWar.com - Your World At War
Suu Kyi's family file complaint at UN against her detention
Geneva, May 25 (AFP) May 25, 2022
Relatives of Myanmar's ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Wednesday filed a complaint before a UN watchdog against her detention following a military coup last year, their lawyers said.

Since a coup ousted her government in February 2021, plunging Myanmar into upheaval, the 76-year-old Nobel peace prize laureate has been in military custody and faces a raft of charges that could jail her for more than 150 years.

Describing the situation as a "judicial kidnapping", human rights lawyers Francois Zimeray and Jessica Finelle said they had filed a complaint on behalf of her relatives with the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

"Her arrest was illegal, her detention is devoid of any legal basis, and her different trials violate the basic rules governing any legal procedure," reads the complaint, seen by AFP.

"This is a kidnapping disguised as a trial, she is held incommunicado in defiance of all justice and resists with strength an unacceptable psychological torture.

"This is a tragic regression for Myanmar. Through the figure of Aung Sang Suu Kyi, the entire Burmese people is silenced, and its democratic aspirations are crushed."

After facing a string of "farcical charges", Suu Kyi has so far been sentenced to a total of 11 years in prison, but faces the prospect of more than 100 more years on 17 different charges, the lawyers said.

Under a previous junta regime, Suu Kyi spent long spells under house arrest in her family's lakeside mansion in Yangon, Myanmar's largest city.

Today, she is confined to an undisclosed location in the capital, with her links to the outside world limited to brief pre-trial meetings with lawyers.

"Can anyone conceive what this detention entails for a (soon) 77-years-old woman, who has already spent 15 years of her life deprived of liberty?" Zimeray and Finelle asked.


ADVERTISEMENT




Space News from SpaceDaily.com
Out of the string theory swampland
Where did cosmic rays come from? MSU astrophysicists are closer to finding out
Silicate clouds discovered in atmosphere of distant exoplanet

24/7 Energy News Coverage
Auto sector reels from China's rare earth restrictions
c-FIRST Team Sets Sights on Future Fire-observing Satellite Constellations
Leaders warn race for minerals could turn seabed into 'wild west'

Military Space News, Nuclear Weapons, Missile Defense
Japan says two Chinese aircraft carriers seen in Pacific
NATO learns as Ukraine's 'creativity' changes battlefield
Rare earths: China's trump card in trade war with US

24/7 News Coverage
'No doubt' Canadian firm will be first to extract deep sea minerals: CEO
What is the high seas treaty?
World leaders urged to step up for overexploited oceans



All rights reserved. Copyright Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.