Son calls on Myanmar junta to free last flame of hope’

Aung San Suu Kyi’s son has made a direct plea to the military junta in Myanmar holding her in solitary confinement to release his mother on the fourth anniversary of her arrest.

- KATE DEVLIN

The imprisonment of the democratically elected leader during the military coup on 1 February 2021 has been "deeply painful" but goes beyond a family story, Kim Aris said. “She is the last flame of hope for peace and democracy,” he told The Independent. “She must be freed. The flame must not be allowed to be snuffed out.”

His call came as he handed a letter into the Myanmar embassy in London calling for her to be set free and after the release of Independent TV’s documentary Cancelled: The Rise and Fall of Aung San Suu Kyi.

The film triggered calls from three former foreign secretaries, William Hague, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw, for her to be freed following her arrest on “trumped up” charges after the coup nearly four years ago. Foreign secretary David Lammy also made a major intervention to demand that Ms Suu Kyi be released.

Mr Aris received no response when he knocked on the door of the embassy and so had to post his letter. A man arriving at the address only a few minutes later was swiftly allowed in.