Aung San Suu Kyi is gravely ill – and the world must act

Kim Aris, the youngest son of 80-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi, in recent days told The Independent (UK) that his mother — Myanmar’s imprisoned democracy leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate — is gravely ill with worsening heart disease.

He condemned her treatment by the country’s coup-installed junta as “cruel, life-threatening and unacceptable,” and insisted that “she must be freed.”

“Without proper medical examinations, it is impossible to know what state her heart is in… I am extremely worried. There is no way of verifying if she is even alive,” Aris said.

Suu Kyi is now in her fifth year of solitary confinement, the fourth time she has been detained by Myanmar’s military rulers over the past three decades. More than 20 years of her life have been stolen by revolving door generals who fear her popularity and moral authority.

Reuters, The Irrawaddy, the Democratic Voice of Burma and other credible news outlets have since amplified the alarm, underscoring the seriousness of Suu Kyi’s condition and the magnitude of the moment.

Let us not overlook the weight of her son’s words. She must be freed. Not later, not after negotiations, not at some vague point of political transition — but now.

Myanmar in chains

On February 1, 2021, Myanmar’s military staged a coup and overthrew the nation’s lawful, democratically elected leadership.

President Win Myint, State Councilor Suu Kyi, ministers and other parliamentarians were all imprisoned, disappeared or killed. The nation’s democracy was snuffed out for all to see in broad daylight.

Myanmar has since descended into widespread state-sponsored violence and repression. Villages, monasteries and schools have been bombed into rubble. Civilians are habitually hunted, tortured, executed or disappeared.

Untold millions are in desperate need of aid. At least three million have been driven from their homes. An entire nation is being starved, torched and erased, in full view of a watching world.

The statistics are staggering. More than 29,000 people — boys and girls, men and women, monks and nuns, artists, teachers, civil servants, grandmothers — have been arrested, brutalized or executed for daring to stand for freedom. More than 22,000 remain behind bars in Myanmar’s notorious prisons.

And now, as if to exemplify this architecture of cruelty, Suu Kyi — the woman who for decades embodied the hope of nonviolent resistance, who carried the aspirations of her people and inspired millions worldwide — is left to suffer from failing health alone in a cell.

Calculated neglect

True to form, the military has leaked word of Suu Kyi’s deteriorating health. Dictatorships are never transparent; they script their narratives carefully. The junta will likely say: “We didn’t kill her; heart disease did.”

Her son told this writer that Suu Kyi has recently been experiencing severe chest and heart pains — among the most foreboding of symptoms, requiring, by any diagnosis, immediate and thorough medical examination.

Suu Kyi needs immediate access to top-notch cardiac care — MRIs, CTA scans, echocardiograms and consultation with credible cardiologists. Without these, her chances of survival are slim. A prison doctor’s cursory visit is no treatment; it is a mockery.

This is how tyrants operate: they deny care, delay intervention and then shrug at the inevitable. It is murder by neglect.

Suu Kyi has been held in windowless solitary confinement for nearly five years. Historically, she has endured house arrests, repeated imprisonments and endless defamation campaigns. And now — after decades of sacrifice — the junta would have her die in a concrete cell unseen, her voice silenced forever.

Meanwhile, coup-maker Senior General Min Aung Hlaing has the audacity to announce a sham “election” for late December. The reality is that Myanmar held a free and fair election in 2020, and the people spoke overwhelmingly in favor of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).

The generals annulled the result on spurious fraud claims, and then responded to pro-democracy protests with tanks, bullets and mass arrests. To call another election now, with the entire democratic leadership in prison, exile or dead, is not only illegitimate – it is a grotesque parody of democracy.

Twisted narratives

Where is the world in all this? Too often silent. Too often complicit through indifference. Too often profiting off Myanmar’s pain. Arms dealers fuel the junta’s killing machine. Oil and gas revenues keep the generals flush with cash. Governments issue statements of “concern” while quietly maintaining bilateral trade.

The international press, too, is not blameless. Major outlets repeated accusations against Suu Kyi, branding her complicit in crimes she neither condoned nor controlled — stripped of context, nuance or recognition of the facts. These distortions became headlines, and headlines hardened into dogma.

Yet the record tells a different story. The UN’s fact-finding mission in 2018, the US State Department’s investigations and my eight years of on-the-ground research — published in “Burma’s Voices of Freedom”, a four-volume set of long-form interviews co-authored with my colleague Fergus Harlow — reveal a far more complex and damning picture of military culpability.

Still, reputations were tarnished, narratives twisted and Suu Kyi was abandoned by many who once hailed her as a pro-democracy icon. In that abandonment, the generals found cover. Silence became complicity.

But this is not the hour to re-litigate old accusations. This is the hour to save Suu Kyi’s life.

Call to conscience

The time for cautious statements and vague condemnations has passed. Suu Kyi’s son, speaking to the darkness of her confinement, now says he cannot even confirm that his mother is still alive.

Imagine that: a son uncertain if his mother still breathes. What greater indictment of the junta’s cruelty? What greater call to conscience?

Suu Kyi’s declining condition, of course, is not only about her. She is still the symbol and hope of a nation of nearly 60 million people.

Myanmar is a country rich in diversity with over 131 ethnic groups, dozens of languages and a living tradition of Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Judaism and humanism. It is the modern-day seat of Vipassana — insight meditation — preserved from the time of the Buddha.

The junta seeks to strangle this richness into silence. But the people of Myanmar will not be silenced. Nor should the world at this crucial moment.

Decades ago, the Dalai Lama warned: “If we do not save Tibet now, there will be no Tibet to save.” The same holds true for Myanmar today. History has taught us — from Srebrenica to Rwanda, from Gaza to Xinjiang — that silence is complicity, delay is death.

I write not as a detached commentator but as someone who has lived much of my life in Myanmar — first as a Buddhist monk in Yangon and later as a journalist documenting human rights abuses until I was expelled and blacklisted by the regime. I have co-authored books with Suu Kyi and long supported Myanmar’s nonviolent struggle for democracy.

And I will never forget Suu Kyi’s sagacious words: “Use your freedom to support ours.” That plea echoes louder today than ever.  So world leaders: use your freedom, exercise your conscience to demand the immediate and unconditional release of Suu Kyi and every political prisoner in Myanmar.

Do not let Suu Kyi die alone in a cell. Do not let history record that the world watched, issued statements and shrugged while a Nobel Peace Prize laureate was allowed to succumb to deliberate and ruthless neglect. Headline it. Demand it. Speak it. Act on it.

This is not only about a nation’s future. It is about the moral credibility of the free world. If we abandon Myanmar, if we abandon Suu Kyi, then what hope remains for democracy anywhere?

Alan Clements is an author, investigative journalist and former Buddhist monk ordained in Myanmar, where he lived for years immersed in the country’s spiritual and political landscapes. He is the author of “Burma: The Next Killing Fields?” and “The Voice of Hope”, co-authored with Aung San Suu Kyi, as well as the four-volume “Burma’s Voices of Freedom” and “Aung San Suu Kyi From Prison and a Letter to a Dictator.” His decades-long work focuses on Myanmar’s ongoing struggle for democracy, human rights and spiritual resilience.