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Blinken Denounces New Three-Year Term For Myanmar’s Suu Kyi

    Advertisement US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday denounced a new three-year sentence imposed on Myanmar’s ousted elected leader Aung San Suu … Continue reading Blinken Denounces New Three-Year Term For Myanmar’s Suu Kyi


In this file photograph taken on November 3, 2019, Myanmar’s State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi looks on as she attends the 10th ASEAN-UN Summit in Bangkok, on the sidelines of the 35th Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit. Former democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is set to make legal history when she defends Myanmar in The Hague on December 11, 2019, against charges of genocide targeting the Buddhist state’s minority Rohingya Muslims. The tiny west African state of Gambia, acting on behalf of the 57-nation Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, will ask the International Court of Justice to take emergency measures to halt Myanmar’s “ongoing genocidal actions”. Manan VATSYAYANA / AFP
Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi arrives for a meeting with Vietnam’s President Tran Dai Quang (not pictured) at the Presidential Palace at the sideline of the World Economic Forum on ASEAN in Hanoi on September 13, 2018. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / KHAM

 

 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday denounced a new three-year sentence imposed on Myanmar’s ousted elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi and urged further pressure on the country’s junta.

“We strongly condemn the Burma military regime’s unjust sentencing of Aung San Suu Kyi to three more years of prison, including hard labor,” Blinken said, using Myanmar’s former name.

“We must work together to hold the regime accountable for its escalating violence and repression of democratically elected leaders in Burma.”

The latest sentence, handed down behind closed doors, takes the total jail time the Nobel laureate and democracy figurehead is facing to two decades.

The new sentence was over purported electoral fraud in 2020 polls that her party won by a landslide.

The military deposed and detained her the following February, and has piled on a series of charges including corruption that her supporters say are trumped up.

The United States and other Western nations have imposed a series of sanctions on Myanmar’s junta since the coup — but to little avail.

The United States pledged further action after the junta executed four democracy activists in July, but has held back from the key step of sanctions on its oil and gas industry amid opposition from Thailand, which imports energy from its neighbor.