Ousted Myanmar civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi (left) faces) a raft of charges, from illegally importing walkie talkies to sedition and inciting dissent, and faces decades in jail if found guilty on all counts. MYANMAR INFORMATION MINISTRY
A Myanmar junta court will this month hear closing arguments in Aung San Suu Kyi’s incitement trial, a source said on November 2, as it begins to wrap up proceedings that could jail the Nobel laureate for decades.
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military ousted Suu Kyi’s government in a February coup, sparking huge protests which met a bloody crackdown. Security forces have launched a bloody crackdown on dissent that has killed more than 1,200 people, according to a local monitoring group.
Suu Kyi, 76, went on trial in June, and testified for the first time last week on charges of inciting dissent against the military.
Media have been barred from attending proceedings at the special court in the military-built capital Naypyidaw, and the junta recently banned her legal team from speaking to reporters.
Former president Win Myin and Myo Aung – a senior leader in Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) party – are co-accused in her incitement trial, which heard its last testimony from the defence on November 2, a source close to the matter told AFP.
“The judge said the next adjournment will be for the final arguments”, and was set for November 16, the source added.
The court will then set a date for sentencing. The charges carry a maximum of three years in jail.
Suu Kyi faces a raft of other charges, from illegally importing walkie talkies to sedition, and faces decades in jail if found guilty on all counts.
On October 29 Win Htein, a former NLD parliamentarian and close aide of Suu Kyi, was handed 20 years in jail for treason, the first high-ranking member of the party to be jailed by a junta court.
Meanwhile, former US diplomat and hostage negotiator Bill Richardson met Myanmar’s junta chief on November 2, the military said, as the country passed nine months under a regime that has detained a US journalist.
Junta chief Min Aung Hlaing received former UN ambassador Richardson in the capital Naypyidaw, where they “exchanged views and discussed … Covid-19 vaccine assistance from the US to Myanmar”, a military-run news website said.
Richardson is in Myanmar on a “private humanitarian mission”, his organisation the Richardson Centre said in a statement announcing his departure.
The military website made no mention of US journalist Danny Fenster, who was detained in May and has since been charged with encouraging dissent against the military and unlawful association.
He faces six years in jail if convicted on both charges.
Richardson, a former governor of New Mexico state, has negotiated “the release of hostages and [US] servicemen in North Korea, Cuba, Iraq and the Sudan”, according to his centre’s website.
His trip comes with the junta increasingly isolated and smarting from a rare snub by regional bloc ASEAN, which barred Min Aung Hlaing from a summit last month over his failure to engage with dissidents.
Richardson’s last visit to Myanmar was in 2018, as part of a panel created to advise on violence in Rakhine state – the site of a 2017 army crackdown that triggered an exodus of more than 700,000 stateless Muslim Rohingya.
But he abruptly resigned after the trip, accusing Suu Kyi of lacking “moral leadership” over the crisis.
Richardson also said he stepped down due to fears the committee would “whitewash” the causes of the Rohingya crisis, over which Myanmar is now being investigated on genocide charges.
Min Aung Hlaing, now the junta chief, was head of the armed forces during the 2017 crackdown.
