Aung San Suu Kyi slapped with additional 4-year jail sentence
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The former State Counselor of Myanmar has been slapped with another 4-year jail sentence after being detained since February 1.
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Former Myanmar State Counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi
Former Myanmar State Counsellor and head of the country’s National Democratic League Aung San Suu Kyi was convicted by a Myanmar court of three criminal charges and was sentenced to four years in prison.
The Nobel laureate has been detained since February 1, when her government was forced out in a military coup that signaled a return to Myanmar’s military rule. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate’s rule, however, was not so different from the military’s, as she continued to jail journalists and defended the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya ethnic group in her country.
Suu Kyi was convicted last month on two other charges and given a four-year prison sentence, which was then halved by the head of the military-installed government.
The coup drew a lot of criticism, both inside Myanmar and out, with protests taking place and security forces disbanding them with mass detentions and crackdowns which resulted in the killing of more than 1,400 civilians have been killed, according to a local monitoring group.
An informed source said that two charges were filed against Aung San Suu Kyi, one of illegally importing and owning walkie-talkies and another of breaking coronavirus rules.
Walkie-talkies are considered contraband in Myanmar and were allegedly found in her house when soldiers raided it on the day of the coup.
Aung San Suu Kyi had drawn widespread condemnation in 2013 for remaining largely silent on the persecution of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. The Rohingya is a minority ethnic group, whose members are not considered typical citizens of the country and are denied social services and legal recourse.
On November 16, 2021, Myanmar's junta charged Aung San Suu Kyi with committing electoral fraud during the 2020 polls, the state media reported.
