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Myanmar: The country’s former leader has been jailed for six years for corruption

A court in junta-run Myanmar today sentenced the country’s former leader Aung San Suu Kyi to six years in prison after finding her guilty on four counts of corruption, a source familiar with the proceedings said.

The 77-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate and figurehead of opposition to Myanmar’s military junta faces at least 18 charges, ranging from fraud to election violations, that carry a total of up to nearly 190 years in prison.

Suu Kyi has called all the allegations against her absurd and denies all the accusations against her.

She was found guilty today of misusing funds from the Daw Khin Kyi Foundation — an organization she founded to promote health and education — to build a home, and to lease government land at a discount, the source said.

Suu Kyi, who is being held in solitary confinement at a prison in the capital Naypyidaw, has already been sentenced to 11 years in prison in other cases.

Myanmar has been plunged into chaos since last year when the military overthrew an elected government led by Suu Kyi’s party, which had won parliamentary elections, and imposed a deadly crackdown on dissent.

Tens of thousands of people have been imprisoned and many have been tortured, beaten or killed in what the United Nations has called crimes against humanity.

The international community has sanctioned the military and denounced Suu Kyi’s secret trials as a travesty.

“It’s a massive attack on her rights, and part of the campaign to bury her and the NLD forever,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, referring to her party. , National League for Democracy, which has been outlawed.

The daughter of the leader of Myanmar’s campaign for independence from colonial Britain led the country for five years, during a brief period of attempted reforms, until toppled in a February 2021 coup.

The military has ruled for five of the last six decades.

Source: AMPE

Source: Capital

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