YANGON: Ousted Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been siloed in military detention since a 2021 coup, but her absence looms large over junta-run polls the generals are touting as a return to democracy.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was once the darling of foreign diplomats, with legions of starry-eyed supporters at home and a reputation for redeeming Myanmar from a history of iron-fisted martial rule.
Her followers swept a landslide victory in Myanmar’s last elections in 2020 but the military voided the vote, dissolved her National League for Democracy (NLD) party and has jailed her in total seclusion.
As she disappeared and a decade-long democratic experiment was halted, activists rose up — first as street protesters and then as guerilla rebels battling the military in an all-consuming civil war.
The octogenarian — known in Myanmar as “The Lady” and famed for wearing flowers in her hair — is set to remain under lock and key as her junta jailers hold polls starting Sunday to overwrite the 2020 vote.
Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad is heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis.
But for her many followers in Myanmar her name is still a byword for democracy, her absence on the ballot an indictment it will be neither free nor fair.
Suu Kyi has spent around two decades of her life in military detention — but in a striking contradiction, she is the daughter of the founder of Myanmar’s armed forces.
She was born on June 19, 1945, in Japanese-occupied Yangon during the final weeks of World War II.
Her father, Aung San, fought for and against both the British and the Japanese colonisers as he sought to secure independence for his country.
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