Aung San Suu Kyi, whose trial ends this Friday (30), embodies the tumultuous fate of Myanmar: an icon of democracy; then, international pariahs for the Rohingya tragedy; and now more isolated than ever.

He was arrested on 1 February 2021 during the coup that toppled his government and ended a brief period of democracy in Myanmar.

Since then, the 77-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been jailed on multiple charges. On Friday, he was sentenced to another seven years in prison, bringing his total sentence to 33 years.

Suu Kyi had been arrested in 2009, but only spent three months behind bars. The remainder of the sentence was served at his lakeside home in Yangon.

Today, the situation is completely different. Isolated, his contacts overseas are limited to his lawyers.

“I don’t believe in hope, I only believe in work (…) Hope alone gets us nowhere,” he told AFP in 2015.

Months later, his party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won the election, bringing him to power.

The NLD also won the 2020 elections, but the generals decided to change the course of the country, implementing a coup.

– Daughter of a hero –

Her life began with a tragedy: the murder of her independence hero father in 1947 when she was two years old. Suu Kyi spent the first part of her life in exile: first in India and then in England.

In her second country, she led the life of an exemplary housewife, married a university professor specializing in Tibetan in Oxford and had two children.

In 1988, when he traveled to Myanmar to visit his mother, he was shocked to announce that he would be involved in the fate of his country, amidst an uprising against the military junta.

“I cannot, as my father’s daughter, remain indifferent to all that is happening,” she said in her first speech, which is considered a symbol of her entry into politics.

The 1988 crackdown killed nearly 3,000 people, but it gave birth to the icon. He became the “keeper of hope for a return to democracy” for all Burmese people, paralyzed by the military dictatorship since 1962, explained Phil Robertson, Asia representative for Human Rights Watch.

The military junta authorized the creation of the LND, but was quickly placed under house arrest. From a distance, Suu Kyi followed her party’s victory in the 1990 election, but the military refused to recognize the result.

During the years she was stuck in her home, she received visits from several people in authority, as well as her two children who live in England with their father, Michael Aris. The latter died of cancer in 1999 without permission from his wife, for fear of being barred from returning to Myanmar.

In 1991, he won the Nobel Peace Prize, but was unable to attend the ceremony in Oslo. He had to wait more than 20 years to receive the award.

In 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi was released after 15 years under house arrest. He entered Parliament in 2012, after the dissolution of the military junta a year earlier.

Quickly, his image began to shake internationally. Some accused him of having an autocratic conception of power.

During her years as head of state, Aung San Suu Kyi was forced to deal with the highly influential military, which controlled three important ministries: Home, Defense and Border.

The image of the Nobel Peace Prize winner, once compared to that of Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King, is forever shaken by the Rohingya drama.

Nearly 750,000 members of this minority fled persecution by Buddhist soldiers and militias in 2017 and took refuge in camps in Bangladesh. The tragedy has led Myanmar to be accused of “genocide” at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the UN’s main judicial body.

The leader, who has always denied “genocidal intent”, has appeared alone to defend his country in court.

This lack of affection for the subject provoked an uprising in the international community. Canada and several British cities revoked her honorary citizenship status, and Amnesty International revoked her “ambassador of conscience” award.

However, the Burmese population maintained its support.

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© Agence France-Presse