YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar’s military chief said yesterday the junta was open to negotiations with ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to end the crisis sparked by its coup after her trials in a junta-run court have concluded.
“After the legal processes against her according to the law are finished we are going to consider (negotiations) based on her response,” Min Aung Hlaing said in a statement.
Suu Kyi, 77, has been detained since the generals toppled her government in a coup on February 1 last year, ending the Southeast Asian country’s brief period of democracy.
She has so far been jailed for 17 years for a clutch of charges rights groups say are politically motivated. The Nobel laureate faces decades more in prison if convicted on other charges she is battling in a closed junta court.
Journalists have been barred from the proceedings, her lawyers gagged from speaking to the media and the junta has given no indication of when her trials might finish.
More than 2,200 people have been killed and over 15,000 arrested in the military’s crackdown on dissent since it seized power, according to a local monitoring group.
