NAYPYIDAW: Myanmar’s authorities have denied a request for Asean’s special envoy to meet its deposed and detained democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi, an administration spokeswoman said on Tuesday.
The military plunged Myanmar into civil war in 2021 when it staged a coup ousting the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and ending a decade-long experiment with democracy.
After five years of military rule, coup leader Min Aung Hlaing this year surrendered his post as armed forces chief to take over as president after tightly restricted elections excluding Suu Kyi’s party.
In late April he announced Suu Kyi, now 81, would be moved to house arrest — although analysts dismissed the apparent act of mercy as lip service intended to rebrand his unrelenting rule.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) bloc has frozen Myanmar out since the coup but chair nation the Philippines welcomed Suu Kyi’s transfer, requesting “brief access” for its Myanmar special envoy.
“Aung San Suu Kyi has been prosecuted under the law and is serving sentences,” Myanmar presidential office spokeswoman Khaing Khaing Soe told reporters in Naypyidaw.
“Therefore she is not allowed to meet with international representatives.” Suu Kyi has vanished from the public eye and is serving a lengthy but unspecified sentence on a host of charges rights groups dismiss as fabricated.
Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2026