File photo of Pope Francis with Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi. File.
| Photo Credit: AP

Pope Francis has offered refuge on Vatican territory for Myanmar’s detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Italian media said on Tuesday (September 24, 2024).

“I asked for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and I met her son in Rome. I have proposed to the Vatican to give her shelter on our territory,” the pope said, according to an account of his meetings with Jesuits in Asia during a trip there earlier this month.

The Corriere della Sera daily published an article by Italian priest Antonio Spadaro that provided extracts from the private meetings, which took place in Indonesia, East Timor and Singapore between September 2 and 13.

“We cannot stay silent about the situation in Myanmar today. We must do something,” the pope is reported as saying.

“The future of your country should be one of peace based on respect for the dignity and rights of everyone and respect for a democratic system that enables everyone to contribute to the common good.”

Suu Kyi (79) is serving a 27-year prison sentence on charges ranging from corruption to not respecting Covid pandemic restrictions.

Rights groups say her closed-door trial was a sham designed to remove her from the political scene.

AFP was unable to reach a junta spokesman for comment on the reported offer from Pope Francis.

Suu Kyi’s son Kim Aris told AFP he was sure his mother would be grateful for the offer.

“I am sure that Maymay would express her gratitude to Pope Francis for urging the military junta to release her and his proposal to the Vatican to offer her refuge,” he said, using a Burmese word for mother.

“Nonetheless, I am doubtful that the junta would take such a request into account, as they remain fearful of Maymay’s popularity among the Burmese people, even from outside of the country.”

In 2015 Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won Myanmar’s first democratic election in 25 years.

The military arrested her when it staged a coup in 2021 and she is said by local media to be suffering health problems in detention.

The 1991 Nobel Peace laureate was once hailed as a beacon for human rights.

But she fell from grace among international supporters in 2017, accused of doing nothing to stop the Army persecuting the country’s mainly Muslim Rohingya minority.

The crackdown is the subject of an ongoing United Nations genocide investigation and persecution continues, according to Rohingya refugees in neighbouring Bangladesh.

Suu Kyi remains widely popular in Buddhist-majority Myanmar, which has been in turmoil since the 2021 coup, with the junta fighting both established ethnic rebel groups and newer pro-democracy forces.

Southeast Asian Foreign Ministers gather in Laos this week for talks on the disputed South China Sea and the conflict in Myanmar, with top diplomats from China and the United States slated to meet on the sidelines.

The three-day meeting of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) starts in the capital Vientiane on July 25.

Antony Blinken will meet Chinese counterpart Wang Yi on the sidelines of the event at which he will “discuss the importance of adherence to international law in the South China Sea”, according to the U.S. State Department.

Beijing claims the waterway — through which trillions of dollars of trade passes annually — almost in its entirety despite an international court ruling that its assertion has no legal basis.

A series of clashes between Philippine and Chinese vessels at flashpoint reefs in recent months have fuelled fears of a conflict that could drag in the United States owing to its mutual defence treaty with Manila.

ASEAN Ministers are expected to issue a joint communique after their meeting on Thursday.

In a draft seen by AFP, some Ministers expressed concerns over “serious incidents” in the waterway “which have eroded trust and confidence, increased tensions, and may undermine peace, security, and stability in the region”.

A Filipino sailor lost a thumb in a June 17 confrontation when Chinese coast guard members wielding knives, sticks and an axe foiled a Philippine Navy attempt to resupply its troops on a remote outpost.

Beijing and Manila later reached an agreement allowing for the resupply of the troops stationed on a rusty warship deliberately grounded on Second Thomas Shoal in 1999 to assert Manila’s claims to the area.

One diplomat who is attending the meeting in Vientiane said China’s assertiveness in the sea was pushing some Southeast Asian countries closer to the United States.

Diplomats in the region were also preparing for the possibility of a Donald Trump victory in November’s U.S. election, they said, requesting anonymity to speak to the media.

ASEAN countries “more or less have a feel of how to deal with him… They know what are his trigger points, what he likes, what he dislikes,” he said.

Myanmar

Also on the agenda in Vientiane is the civil war in Myanmar, sparked by a military coup in 2021.

ASEAN, of which Myanmar is a member, has led diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis but has made little progress.

The junta is excluded from the bloc’s top-level meetings over its refusal to negotiate with its opponents and its brutal crackdown on dissent.

Myanmar is expected to send a senior bureaucrat to this week’s meeting, according to several sources.

The military’s readiness to re-engage with ASEAN diplomatically was a “sign of the junta’s weakened position”, a Southeast Asian diplomat, who will attend the talks, told AFP on condition of anonymity.

The generals have yet to make any meaningful counterattack following an offensive by ethnic armed groups in October that seized swaths of territory along the border with China.

The losses triggered rare public criticism of its top leadership.

“The centre is still solid under the junta,” the diplomat said, warning Myanmar could “become a failed state”.

The draft communique seen by AFP said ministers “strongly condemned” the continued violence.

The crisis has divided the bloc, with Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines calling for tougher action against the junta.

Thailand has held its own bilateral talks with the generals as well as detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

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.

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.