Myanmar’s Suu Kyi receives another sentence

A court in the junta-led government in Myanmar on Wednesday found the country’s former leader Aung San Suu Kyi guilty of corruption in one of several cases against her. As a result, she received a sentence of five years in prison. The court said she took a $600,000 bribe in cash and gold from Phyo Min Thein, the former minister of the largest city of Yangon. 

Is Suu Kyi guilty? Her lawyers and supporters have dismissed the sentencing as the military’s attempt to keep her out of power. Suu Kyi has opposed military rule in Myanmar since the 1980s and won a Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts. She led the country as state counsellor from 2016 until the 2021 military coup. But she received international condemnation for Myanmar’s brutal 2017 crackdown against the minority Rohingya Muslims. In February, the junta replaced Suu Kyi at the United Nations’ top court in an ongoing genocide case over the treatment of the Rohingya.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archive, read my 2017 report on the humanitarian cost of the Rohingya crackdown.