LONDON - The younger son of Myanmar's imprisoned pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is calling for the country's military-led government to provide proof that she is alive, after it claimed in April that her sentence was commuted to around 17 years and that she had been moved to house arrest.
In an interview this week in London, where he resides, Kim Aris said he believes his octogenarian mother has not been moved to house arrest and is still in prison in the capital Naypyitaw, saying there hasn't been "any evidence" of a transfer.
"The only news that we hear about her health is that it's getting worse," he said, adding that conditions in the Myanmar facility where she may still be locked up were "pretty horrendous," based on information he had received from a former prisoner there.
Aris said that Suu Kyi is currently suffering from a heart condition as well as age-related health issues including osteoporosis.
Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner, has been detained since a February 2021 coup toppled the democratically elected government in which she was serving as the de facto leader. Aris said his last contact with her was a letter he received over two years ago.
Born and raised in London, Aris, 48, lived with both his parents until his mother left when he was around 11 years old to care for her mother in Myanmar, where she then became involved in the pro-democracy movement.
While leading the movement in the military-ruled country, Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest at various times between 1989 and 2010, amounting to some 15 years of detention. During her long absence, Aris was raised by his father, a British academic.
In 2016, Suu Kyi became the country's de facto leader as her party, the National League for Democracy, won parliamentary elections the previous year. Five years later, she was deposed in the coup and arrested.
After that, Aris felt a duty to speak up for her. "I'd rather not be a public figure, but in this case I need to stand up for my mother," he said.
He recently completed an 81-kilometer skateboard marathon to commemorate Suu Kyi's 81st birthday in June and to help raise awareness about her incarceration.
Aris, who has been visiting a number of countries, including Japan in December, to campaign for his mother's release, urged other governments to continue to put pressure on Myanmar's military leadership.
As a civil war between the military-led government and pro-democracy forces has continued since the coup, Aris also called for intensifying an international effort to cut fuel supplies to the military so as to thwart its airstrikes.
"Stopping the military getting access to aviation fuel, that's the main thing," he said.
