Europe shouldn’t buy Myanmar junta’s Suu Kyi ploy

Myanmar’s military is trying to sell former State Councilor Aung San Suu Kyi’s transfer from prison to a “designated residence” as a gesture of mercy. But the move has raised basic questions: where is she, who has seen her and can anyone outside the junta verify her health and well-being?

The military’s tactic is by now well-worn: imprison perceived opponents, shift them around different detention facilities, release a few sporadically, reduce sentences and wait for the foreign praise to roll in. Some Western governments have responded carefully, calling for Suu Kyi’s freedom, access to family and lawyers, and proof of life. But some have already gone too far.

The European Union responded cautiously, calling for her full release and the freedom of all political prisoners. France welcomed the “Proof of Life” campaign led by her son, Kim Aris, while the United States and Canada also called for her freedom.

Seema Malhotra, the UK minister for the Indo-Pacific, went somewhat further by calling the move “a welcome first step,” though she said it must lead to Suu Kyi’s unconditional release.

The reality is that Suu Kyi is not free – only where she is being detained has changed. From 1989 to 2010, she spent 15 years under house arrest at her home. But, obviously, house arrest is not freedom.

The routine is repeating as coup-maker Senior General Min Aung Hlaing trades his military khakis for civilian garb without changing the political system. After sham elections held in December and January, the general has seized the presidency, but the regime remains military-built and controlled.

The world has seen this act before, and both the EU and UK previously bought tickets to the show.

Billion-dollar illusion of reform

After the 2010 election that started a process of political opening, Myanmar’s military served up a story Western governments wanted to hear: that the long-abusive generals had changed their stripes and supported democracy. The line then was that the country was opening, that foreign engagement would encourage reform and the peace process, and that funding would help end decades of civil war.

European donors greeted the narrative with money, consultants and confidence in a “transition” that never actually removed the military from political power. According to the Asia Foundation’s 2024 review, Myanmar went from the world’s 79th-largest aid recipient in 2010 to the seventh-largest in 2015, receiving US$13.7 billion in aid commitments between 2011 and 2015.

To be sure, some of that aid helped real people in need with health, education, civil society and ethnic community-promoting programs. But the politics were all wrong. Mostly Western donors treated a military-designed opening as a genuine transition away from military power and toward democratic rule.

They treated the 2015 Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement (NCA) as the foundation for national peace, even though it excluded many ethnic armed organizations, failed to address federalism and left the army outside of civilian control.

ISP-Myanmar, citing EU figures, later noted that the EU earmarked 103 million euros for peace-related efforts between 2014 and 2020, including 8.7 million euros for the Myanmar Peace Center and 58 million euros for the EU Peace and Conflict Resolution package.

The conflict data, however, did not support the optimism. ACLED-based trends show violence did not ebb during the reform decade, with an especially sharp military-driven spike in 2017.

Studies by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and the Myanmar Institute for Peace and Security (MIPS), meanwhile, found that Myanmar’s non-inclusive ceasefires did not reduce overall violence.

Critics then warned that backing the government-aligned Myanmar Peace Center caused many ethnic communities to feel donors had taken Naypyitaw’s side in their conflicts. That widely held ethnic sentiment was not anti-peace. It was a warning to donors against mistaking Naypyitaw’s process for a real political settlement.

Europe also conferred legitimacy and status on the military. Min Aung Hlaing attended the European Union Military Committee in Belgium in 2016. The UK engaged the military until the Rohingya crisis, widely portrayed as a military-perpetuated “genocide”, made continued collaboration politically impossible.

The EU also trained and equipped Myanmar’s military-controlled police through a program known as MYPOL. Later, EU-trained crowd-control units were accused of lethal crackdowns on pro-democracy protesters. The EU suspended the program only after the February 2021 coup.

After the initial opening and re-engagement with the West, the military quickly reverted to its abusive form. It attacked the Rohingya in 2016 and 2017, cranked up wars in ethnic areas, blocked constitutional change and finally staged the 2021 democracy-suspending coup soon after voters resoundingly rejected military rule at the ballot box.

When unarmed protesters filled the streets after the coup, those same coercive structures were deployed in major cities. Mya Thwe Thwe Khaing, a 20-year-old unarmed woman, was shot in the head in broad daylight by police in Naypyitaw on February 9, becoming the first widely recognized victim in a military crackdown that would eventually claim thousands of civilian lives.

Since then, the junta has burned villages, bombed schools and hospitals, jailed political and civil society leaders, tortured detainees, blocked aid and turned the country into a battlefield. The point is not that Europe fired the bullets. The point is that Europe helped legitimize institutions that remained under military control and were later turned on civilians.

Old playbook returns

The question for Europe today is not whether Min Aung Hlaing and his lieutenants have changed their ways. The question is whether Europe has changed its habits.

The EU still has sanctions in place on Myanmar. In April 2026, it extended measures until April 2027, covering 105 individuals and 22 entities, with an arms embargo and a ban on military training. But sanctions will be ineffectual and meaningless if Europe shifts its diplomacy to acknowledge the generals’ new look.

The UK has a different but related problem. Burma Campaign UK has recently warned that the minister’s statement has echoes of the mistakes Britain made after 2010. By welcoming a move from prison to house arrest for Suu Kyi, London risks giving the generals what they crave: a small reward for a staged gesture.

To be sure, the generals are not offering reform. They are offering fatigue management. They know Europe is busy with Ukraine, Gaza, migration, economic pressure and increasingly polarized domestic politics. They are betting that Europe’s weary diplomats will accept something that appears stable and orderly, even if it is built on mass violence.

This is the old 2010 playbook, adapted for a more distracted world. Min Aung Hlaing does not need Europe or the US to fully embrace him, at least not at first. He only needs small openings through softer language, lower pressure, quiet contacts, trade continuity, controlled humanitarian channels and a few Western governments willing to see something better than nothing.

The US is already showing how quickly this can happen. The junta has tried to reach the Trump administration through trade, tariffs, natural resources and business deals. Min Aung Hlaing has praised Trump, sought sanctions relief, hired Washington lobbyists, backed a deal to buy US soybean meal and promoted small shipments of Paw San rice to the US.

Europe should see this as a warning: the generals are testing whether business contacts can serve as a form of political rehabilitation in a new age of Trump-inspired transactional diplomacy.

That is how fake transitions begin – not with a dramatic reversal but with small concessions couched in the language of pragmatism.

But Europe should not repeat the mistake it made after 2010. It should not fund another state-centered peace show, treat political prisoner transfers as progress or confuse access to generals with influence over generals.

The lesson is not that Europe should abandon Myanmar. The lesson is that Europe should stop focusing on the military. Support should go instead to civil society, independent media, cross-border aid groups, ethnic administrations, workers’ organizations and other democratic forces now building a federal future from the ground up.

Min Aung Hlaing’s new presidential title is not a path to peace. It is a disguise, and Europe has seen this masquerade before. The concern is not that Myanmar’s generals are trying it again, with Suu Kyi’s prison transfer as a bald opening move. Rather, it’s that there are already signs that Brussels and London are pretending not to recognize it.

Nyein Chan Aye is a Burmese journalist based in Washington, D.C., who previously worked for the BBC and Voice of America and writes on Myanmar, the US, China and regional affairs.