The Political Situation in Myanmar

Aung San Suu Kyi has spoken with her family – for the first time in five years

Myanmar’s former leader Aung San Suu Kyi has spoken with her son by phone for the first time in over five years, AFP reports.

“Hearing her voice again means more than I can put into words,” her son writes on Facebook.

Suu Kyi is under house arrest and has been kept almost entirely cut off from the outside world since she was ousted in a military coup in 2021. Recently, the junta appears to have eased restrictions somewhat. In August, she was permitted to receive a representative from the Red Cross.

Suu Kyi’s son: Mother is completely alone – has a small garden

On Thursday, Kim Aris—son of the Burmese pro-democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi—was contacted, to his surprise, by the British Foreign Office. They instructed him to go to the Myanmar Embassy in London, where, after five years of silence, he was given the opportunity to speak with his mother for 20 minutes.

“We mostly talked about the family and how she is doing,” Aris told *The Independent* shortly after the call.

According to her son, his mother lives entirely alone in a house surrounded by police, day and night. She also has access to a small garden, though it is “basically a thicket.”