yangon | Ex-Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi, already sentenced to six years in prison by the junta, has been charged again, this time accused of pressuring the electoral commission during the 2020 legislative elections won by her party, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday.
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The former President of the Republic, Win Myint, was charged with the same count, specified this source.
The National League for Democracy (NLD) had won a landslide victory in the 2020 legislative elections.
The army, alleging massive fraud during this election, overthrew the government of Aung San Suu Kyi on February 1, 2021 and canceled these elections.
Several officials of the electoral commission were arrested, accused of having rigged the vote in favor of the NLD.
International observers, for their part, considered that it had generally taken place in a free and fair manner.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 76, has been detained since the coup that ended a decade of democratic transition.
She is the subject of a multitude of charges: violation of a law on state secrets dating from the colonial era, electoral fraud, sedition, incitement to public disorder, corruption…
She has already been sentenced to six years in prison in recent weeks and faces a total of decades in prison at the end of her trial.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner is serving the beginning of her sentence under house arrest, in the place where she has been held incommunicado for a year and where she must remain for the duration of her trial. The latter is held behind closed doors, his lawyers being prohibited from speaking to the press and international organizations.
Several of his relatives have already been sentenced to heavy sentences: capital punishment for a former parliamentarian, 75 years in prison for a former minister, 20 years for one of his collaborators. Others went into exile or went into hiding.
The coup plunged the country into chaos. More than 1,500 civilians have been killed by security forces, according to a local NGO, and citizen militias have taken up arms against the junta across Burma.
To mark the first anniversary of the putsch on Tuesday, activists called for silent strikes.
Authorities have warned that such actions could now amount to high treason, a crime punishable by death.
On Monday, members of the national unity government (NUG), made up of former NLD deputies and representatives of ethnic minorities, held a press conference in Paris.
On this occasion, Aung Myo Min, Minister of Human Rights of the NUG, once again urged the international community to put in place “an arms embargo and to (toughen up) economic sanctions to cut off all trade” with the army. .