Myanmar: What's behind Suu Kyi's transfer to house arrest?

Former Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been moved to house arrest after spending over five years in prison, the country's state media reported last week.  

The 80-year-old Nobel laureate, who led the country between 2016 and 2021 as state counselor, had been detained in a military coup in February 2021.

Suu Kyi was subsequently convicted on a series of charges, including corruption, election fraud and breaching official secrets rules. She had been serving her sentence at an undisclosed location in the capital, Naypyitaw.

Her supporters say the cases were fabricated to keep her out of politics.

Suu Kyi is a world-renowned activist and the daughter of Myanmar's independence hero, General Aung San.She had been clashing with Myanmar authorities for decades, and spent nearly 15 years in detention between 1989 and 2010. Her release in 2010 was greeted internationally as a watershed moment for Myanmar, making Suu Kyi one of the world's best-known symbols of peaceful resistance.

Her National League for Democracy (NLD) was also severely repressed under the country's previous military-run governments. In 2015, the party scored a landslide victory in the general elections and was allowed to take office, with Suu Kyi serving as the highest civilian leader.

However, Suu Kyi's international reputation was left in tatters after she made comments that were seen her defending the country's military and dismissing its atrocities against the Muslim Rohingya minority. 

Domestically, she was also criticized for the slow pace of reforms, limited progress on the rights of ethnic minorities, and the fact that the military still had a major influence over Myanmar's politics.

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Coup plunges country into civil war

After her NLD won another landslide victory in late 2020, the military claimed electoral fraud and soon staged a coup, locking  Myanmar into complex civil war.

UN figures indicate that nearly 8,000 people have been killed and around 3.6 million displaced since 2021. The conflict remains ongoing, despite the junta's efforts to project stability.

On April 30, the military-run government granted amnesty to 1,519 prisoners, including 11 foreigners, as part of a regular annual release tied to a Buddhist holiday.

Another large amnesty was granted earlier in April, including to Win Myint, who served as president during the NLD's time in office.

A signal to ASEAN?

The junta oversaw elections in December and January that were widely dismissed by opponents, Western governments and rights groups as neither free nor fair.

Suu Kyi's NLD was barred, the junta couldn't hold ballots in many opposition-run areas of the country, and the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party dominated the process.

Still, the vote allowed Min Aung Hlaing, the junta chief, to recast himself as president of a new administration, giving the military a civilian facade as it seeks to reengage its regional partners.

Most analysts see Suu Kyi's transfer to house arrest as part of that diplomatic effort, particularly within the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Some member states, notably Thailand, have pushed the bloc to fully re-engage with the new military-run government after ASEAN partially suspended Myanmar from its high-level events in 2021.

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The Philippines, the bloc's chair this year, has taken a more ambiguous position.

"This announcement came just before the ASEAN Summit in the Philippines, suggesting that the authorities in Myanmar may have timed the move for more maneuvering space within ASEAN," Moe Thuzar, senior fellow and coordinator of the Myanmar Studies Program at the ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute in Singapore, told DW.

However, Thuzar noted that Suu Kyi was still in detention, even after being moved home, and has several years left on her prison sentence. Her NLD remains outlawed, with the party's leadership decimated by arrests, exile and repression.

That has not stopped the junta from using her status as a bargaining chip, analysts say.

"These narratives do travel, and I have heard diplomats from ASEAN countries present such moves as noteworthy, potentially signaling a willingness by the military to engage, even if the underlying realities remain unchanged," Kristina Kironska, an assistant professor at Palacky University Olomouc, told DW.

Calls for Suu Kyi's unconditional release

The decision to move Suu Kyi to house arrest is a "meaningful step" towards a "credible political process," a spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement.

The United States has previously called for Suu Kyi's immediate and unconditional release. More recently, however, there are rumors that Washington is seeking ways to expand access to Myanmar's abundant rare earth minerals, which might involve a deal with the regime.

Myanmar's Ministry of Information has recently contracted Roger Stone, a longtime lobbyist and ally of President Donald Trump, to represent the new quasi-civilian administration in Washington.

The EU last week extended its extensive sanctions on military-linked businesses and individuals for another 12 months, and has been adamant that only wholesale democratic reform in Myanmar would change its policy. The bloc also restated their demand for Suu Kyi's release after the news of her transfer to house arrest.

"We call for full respect of her physical and mental wellbeing, regular access to family and legal counsel, and reiterate our demand for her full release and of all remaining political prisoners," an EU spokesperson said in a statement.

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China's role in Suu Kyi's transfer?

There have also been reports that Beijing may have pressured Naypyitaw to ease Suu Kyi's detention.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited Myanmar on April 25, and there are unconfirmed reports that he met with Suu Kyi. Beijing has not commented on such a meeting.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said at a press conference on April 30, the day of her reported transfer, that Suu Kyi is "an old friend of China. Her circumstance has always been on our minds."

Beijing is widely seen as wanting to stabilize its border, expand trade routes and advance major infrastructure projects in Myanmar.

China has previously tried to shape the conflict by supporting different ethnic armed groups, and it has taken an interventionist approach to the expansion of scam compounds inside Myanmar that target Chinese citizens.

It's plausible that Beijing encouraged Suu Kyi's release to house arrest since China "has significant leverage over the military regime," Kironska told DW.

"Beijing may be pushing the junta toward cosmetic de-escalation and controlled political management to stabilize the country enough for Chinese interests to be protected," she added.

Whether the move changes Myanmar's political trajectory is another matter. While Suu Kyi and the NLD remain popular, the pro-democracy movement has, in many ways, moved beyond her in the five years since the start of the civil war.

Rather than focusing on her fate, civilian militia and ethnic armed organizations have increasingly turned their attention to issues such as federalism, minority rights, and the dismantling of the military's political dominance.

Edited by: Srinivas Mazumdaru