Demonstrators rally on motorcycles to mark the 79th birthday of the country’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Launglon township in Tanintharyi region, Myanmar, on June 19, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Myanmar authorities arrested 22 people for marking the birthday of imprisoned democracy figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi, local media reported on Wednesday.

Police in Mandalay, Myanmar’s second-largest city, arrested 22 people who had posted pictures of themselves wearing flowers in their hair – long a signature Suu Kyi look – Eleven Media reported, citing an anonymous official.

Other local media said around a dozen had been arrested in the central Myanmar city for wearing flowers or praying with them in public.

A prominent pro-junta Telegram account posted several photos claiming to show those arrested, including one showing five people with their legs placed in stocks.

Suu Kyi, who turned 79 on Wednesday, has been detained by the military since it toppled her government and seized power in 2021.

The coup and subsequent crackdown on dissent have sparked a widespread armed uprising that the military is struggling to crush.

The junta has rebuffed numerous requests by foreign leaders and diplomats to meet Nobel laureate Suu Kyi, who has reportedly suffered health problems during more than three years in detention.

Suu Kyi’s only known encounter with a foreign envoy since the coup came in July last year, when then-Thai foreign minister Don Pramudwinai said he had met her for more than an hour.

Suu Kyi is serving a 27-year sentence imposed by a junta court after a trial condemned by rights groups as a sham to shut her out of politics.

Her son told AFP in February she was in “strong spirits” after receiving a letter from her — their first communication since she was detained in the coup.

Thailand delivered its first batch of humanitarian aid to war-torn Myanmar on March 25, in what officials hope will be a continuing effort to ease the plight of millions of people displaced by fighting.

But critics charge that the aid will benefit only people in areas under the Myanmar military’s control, providing it with a propaganda boost while leaving the vast majority of displaced people in contested areas without access to assistance.

Myanmar is wracked by a nationwide armed conflict that began after the army ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 and suppressed widespread nonviolent protests that sought a return to democratic rule. The fighting has displaced millions of people and battered the economy.

Thailand sent ten trucks over the border from the northern province of Tak, carrying some 4,000 packages of aid to three towns in Kayin State, also known as Karen State, where it will be distributed to approximately 20,000 displaced people.

The parcels contained aid worth around 5 million baht ($1,38,000), mostly food, instant beverages and other basic items such as toiletries. More than 2.8 million people in Myanmar are displaced, according to UN agencies, most by fighting that arose after the army’s takeover. They say 18.6 million people, including 6 million children, require humanitarian aid.

Risk of food insecurity

Carl Skau, Chief Operating Officer of the UN’s World Food Programme, said earlier this month that one in four of the displaced is at risk of acute food insecurity.

The initiative for what has been called a humanitarian corridor is being carried out by the Thai Red Cross, with funding from Thailand’s Foreign Ministry and logistical support from the army, which traditionally has played a major role in border activities.

Officials from Thailand and Kayin State attended a send-off ceremony, which was presided over by Thai Vice Foreign Minister Sihasak Phuangketkeow. Myanmar’s Red Cross will handle distribution of the aid.

Drivers from Myanmar took the trucks across the 2nd Thai-Myanmar Friendship Bridge, which crosses the Moei River on the border.

“That corridor puts humanitarian aid into the hands of the junta because it goes into the hands of the junta-controlled Myanmar Red Cross,” Tom Andrews, the UN independent human rights expert on Myanmar, said last week.

“So we know that the junta takes these resources, including humanitarian, and weaponises them, uses them for their own military strategic advantage. The fact of the matter is, is that the reason that humanitarian aid is in such desperate need is precisely because of the junta.”

Areas to focus

Mr. Andrews said the areas in desperate need are “conflict areas in which the junta has absolutely no influence or control whatsoever. So those are the areas we need to focus on.”

Large areas of the country, especially frontier areas, are now contested or controlled by anti-military resistance forces, including pro-democracy fighters allied with armed ethnic minority organisations that have been fighting for greater autonomy for decades. Thai officials say the process of distribution will be monitored by the ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management to ensure it reaches people fairly and equally.

Mr. Sihasak said after the ceremony that the aid is expected to be delivered to the three towns the same day, and that Myanmar will send photos as proof it has been delivered.

‘Truly humanitarian’

“I would like to emphasise that this is truly humanitarian aid and not related to the politics or conflicts in Myanmar. I think, now, people should think about the interests of the Myanmar people as a priority,” he said. “Of course, if the initiative today is carried out smoothly, and meets the objectives that we set, Thailand as a neighbour will see how we can expand the help to other areas.”

The humanitarian corridor project was initiated by Thailand with support from Myanmar and other fellow members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) during a Foreign Ministers Retreat of the bloc in Laos in January.

Thai Foreign Minister Parnpree Bahiddha-Nukara had said ASEAN needs to actively push to implement what it calls the Five-Points Consensus, which it agreed to just a few months after the army’s 2021 takeover.

The agreement called for an immediate end to violence, dialogue among all concerned parties, mediation by an ASEAN special envoy, provision of humanitarian aid through ASEAN channels, and a visit to Myanmar by the special envoy to meet all concerned parties.

But Myanmar’s generals, despite initially assenting to the consensus, failed to act on it, leaving ASEAN looking powerless.

Dulyapak Preecharush, a professor of Southeast Asia Studies at Bangkok’s Thammasat University, said the aid initiative is a good start for Thailand, which has been quiet and inactive” about Myanmar.

“The readiness of Thailand to deliver the aid is not an issue, but when the aid is delivered to Myanmar, it will face obstacles from violent fighting and different stakeholders who will have their gains and losses.” Mr. Sihasak said Thailand hopes the aid will be distributed equally and transparently, and that the delivery of the aid will help create a “good atmosphere” that will contribute to the peace process in Myanmar.

Watch | Meet the Myanmar women fighting the military junta

| Video Credit:
AFP

On a deserted road in northern Myanmar, Moe Moe prepares to launch a drone carrying a bomb towards a nearby military position. Moe Moe is only 18 years old

She is one of hundreds of women training, and fighting alongside men in pro-democracy groups across Myanmar

Moe Moe is part of one such rebel group, People’s Defence Forces (PDF) that was formed in 2021 to end the military junta’s rule.

Women in the Mandalay PDF are also performing a range of other duties, including joining patrols and working as medics.

They also work in the administration that keeps the Mandalay PDF funded and fed.

Story and Visuals: AFP

Production and Voiceover: Yuvasree S

A protester holds a poster with an image of detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi during a candlelight vigil to honour those who have died during demonstrations against the military coup in Yangon on March 13, 2021.
| Photo Credit: AFP

Myanmar’s junta is endangering the life of jailed democracy figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi, her political party said on Thursday, accusing the military of depriving her of medical care and food.

Suu Kyi has been detained since the generals seized power in February 2021, ending a 10-year democratic experiment and plunging the Southeast Asian country into bloody turmoil.

In recent days, local media have reported the Nobel laureate, 78, was suffering dizzy spells, vomiting and unable to eat because of a tooth infection.

“We are particularly concerned that she is not receiving adequate medical care and they are not providing healthy food nor accommodation sufficiently with the intention to risk her life,” the National League for Democracy said.

“If Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s health is not only impaired but her life also is endangered, the military junta is solely responsible,” the statement said, using a Burmese honorific.

During her 19-month trial in a junta court that rights groups denounced as a sham, Suu Kyi regularly skipped hearings on health grounds.

That trial ended last year, with Suu Kyi jailed for a total of 33 years in prison, a term later partially reduced by junta chief Min Aung Hlaing.

Suu Kyi’s UK-based son told the BBC last week that the junta was denying treatment to his mother for dizziness and a gum disease, though he is not in direct contact with her.

A junta spokesman told AFP last week that reports of Suu Kyi’s ill health were “rumours”.

“She’s not suffering from anything as her medical doctors are taking care of her health,” Zaw Min Tun said.

Suu Kyi, who remains widely popular in Myanmar, was being held as a “hostage… in secret places”, by the junta, the NLD said.

The party asked the international community to “advance efforts and push” for the release of Suu Kyi and all political prisoners in Myanmar.

According to a local monitoring group, more than 24,000 people have been arrested in the junta’s sweeping crackdown since the coup.

In June 2022, after more than a year under house arrest, Suu Kyi was moved to a prison compound in another part of the sprawling, military-built capital Naypyidaw.

There, she was no longer permitted her domestic staff of around 10 people and assigned military-chosen helpers, sources told AFP at the time.

Confinement in the isolated capital is a far cry from the years Suu Kyi spent under house arrest during a previous junta, where she became a world-famous democracy figurehead.

During that period, she lived at her family’s colonial-era lakeside mansion in commercial hub Yangon and regularly gave speeches to crowds on the other side of her garden wall.

The NLD has been decimated in the junta’s bloody crackdown on dissent, with one former lawmaker executed by the junta in the country’s first use of capital punishment in decades.

In March, the junta dissolved the party for failing to re-register under a tough new military-drafted electoral law, removing it from polls it has indicated it may hold in 2025.