Aung San Suu Kyi won’t be freed because the military junta believe she’s too powerful, warns son

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Aung San Suu Kyi will not be freed from incarceration by her military captors in Myanmar as they are worried about the influence she still wields in the country, her youngest son has warned.

Kim Aris, who has spent the last five years campaigning for his mother to be freed from her latest jail term, said he was concerned about the 81-year-old’s health and demanded greater transparency about the conditions she is being held under.

Speaking at The Independent’s latest screening in London of its documentary examining the controversial former leader’s political career and legacy Cancelled: The Rise and Fall of Aung San Suu Kyi, Mr Aris said his mother had been imprisoned on trumped-up charges.

Asked why she was still being held by Myanmar’s military chief-turned-president Min Aung Hlaing, he said: “I think he’s still afraid of her, ultimately, the power she is able to hold in Burma is still much greater than people realise and the people of Burma still support her.

“When they freed her previously I don’t think they realised quite how much support she had – now they do.”

Ms Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her campaign for democracy before her reputation was damaged by her failure to stand up for the Rohingya Muslims brutally targeted in her country in 2016, has only been seen a handful of times since her arrest in February 2021.

She was visited by officials from the International Committee of the Red Cross in August this year.

And in a dramatic intervention by King Charles this week, images were released by the Myanmar authorities showing her receiving two books on gardening and a sealed letter from the king while under house arrest in the capital Naypyitaw.

The books were The Land Gardeners: Soil to Table, by British authors Bridget Elworthy and Henrietta Courtauld, which explores how healthy soil helps produce healthy food. The second, Soil: The World at Our Feet, is a catalogue from an exhibition at London’s Somerset House about the importance of soil to life on Earth.

The new photographs, which were released by the junta on social media, showed Ms Suu Kyi wearing a traditional blouse and skirt, seated across a small table from two officials in a wood-panelled room.

Reflecting on the pictures, Mr Aris said: “I think the military are trying to legitimise themselves following the elections at the end of last year and the beginning of this year.

“Lots of different governments and heads of state have been calling for more transparency as to what’s happening with my mother, and they think this is one way of appeasing people. It’s not for my mother’s sake, let’s put it that way.”

Ms Suu Kyi was arrested when Myanmar’s military seized power from her elected government in a coup. She was subsequently convicted of multiple offences, including corruption, incitement, and election fraud, in trials that have been criticised by her supporters and human rights groups as politically motivated.

In April 2026, the regime reduced her sentence through a series of amnesties, bringing the remaining term to 18 years, and transferred her from prison to house arrest. Her exact location has not been disclosed, and concerns about her health persist.

Min Aung Hlaing named himself president in April 2026 following a sham election in which any genuine political opponents, including Ms Suu Kyi and her party, were barred from taking part.

He has since aggressively pursued diplomatic ties with other countries, carrying out visits to neighbours including Laos, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Malaysia.

But Myanmar’s military leaders have been excluded from high-level Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) summits since the coup, however, after failing to implement a regional peace plan intended to end the violence. Its regime remains largely isolated on the world stage.

Min Aung Hlaing also remains under US sanctions for human rights abuses, including for his role in the coup and crushing a subsequent popular uprising, and the 2016-2017 mass killings and expulsions of Rohingya Muslims that Washington declared a genocide.

Mr Aris said it was vital sanctions against Myanmar continued and that the spotlight focused on the humanitarian plight of the people.

“We have to keep up with the sanctions, and we have to maintain the truth in that the people of Burma are still being bombed on a regular basis,” he said. “The democratically elected government remains locked up, these elections that were held are a complete sham, and nobody should be legitimising them.

“The military have shown themselves incapable of actually winning this battle on the ground. They resort to airstrikes and other tactics because that’s all they have, and they, they lost a huge amount of territory over the course of the last five years, and they’re in a weaker position than they were before the coup.

“So I think there is still a lot of hope.”

Turning to his mother he added: “She’s an 81-year-old with ongoing health concerns, and I don’t know how long she could last in the conditions under which she’s being held. I just want to see her free. That’s it.”

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