Explained | The legal battles of Aung San Suu Kyi since the 2021 coup in Myanmar

Myanmar’s former leader ousted by the military junta has already been given more than 17 years in prison by a junta-run court

The story so far: On Friday, September 2, a court set up by Myanmar’s military leadership sentenced deposed leader Aung San Suu Kyi, 77, to three years in prison with hard labour, declaring her guilty of having committed electoral fraud.

Ms. Suu Kyi, a Nobel laureate and the face of Myanmar's opposition to years of military rule, has been in detention since February 2021, when the junta took over the administration in a coup. She has already been handed more than 17 years in prison by the court on charges that international rights organisations have called politically motivated. If found guilty of all the charges, she could be sentenced to more than 100 years in prison. The ousted leader has denied all the charges against her.

Myanmar’s military regime, or Tatmadaw, when it took over on February 1 last year, arrested the entire civilian leadership including Ms. Suu Kyi, the de facto leader of the country’s short-lived democratic administration. Since then, charges levied by the new administration against her kept piling up.

Import and possession of walkie-talkies: First, Ms. Suu Kyi was charged right after the military’s takeover with having improperly imported walkie-talkies into the country, which served as the initial justification for her continued detention. A second charge of illegally possessing the devices was filed the following month. The radios were seized from the entrance gate of her residence and the barracks of her bodyguards on the day she was arrested in February last year. Despite her lawyers arguing that the radios were not in her personal possession and were legitimately used to help provide for her security, the court declined to dismiss the charges.

The junta-run court in the capital, Naypyitaw, on January 10 this year, sentenced her to two years in prison for violating the Export-Import Law for importing the unlicensed walkie-talkies and one year under the Telecommunications Law for possessing them. The court ruled that the sentences would be served concurrently.

Charges of flouting Coronavirus restrictions: Ms. Suu Kyi was later charged with two counts of violating Coronavirus restrictions while campaigning for the 2020 election, in which her party National League for Democracy (NLD) won by a landslide. On December 6, 2021, the court sentenced her to two years in prison for violating the Natural Disaster Management Law for allegedly breaching COVID restrictions in a campaign appearance ahead of elections in November 2020. She was given another two-year sentence on January 10 for one more count of violating pandemic curbs while campaigning.

Incitement: The court charged her with incitement for two statements published on her party’s social media after she was detained. The statements allegedly condemned the military coup and asked international organisations not to cooperate with the junta regime. Ms. Su Kyi pleaded not guilty in this case as well. Her lawyers argued that Suu Kyi and co-defendant, former President Win Myint, could not be held responsible for the statements and vigorously sought to have the incitement charge dismissed but the court declined the request.