Recently Aung San Suu Kyi was convicted of corruption charges and now faces up to 33 years in prison. She is also facing charges related to breaching COVID-19 laws, sedition, and election fraud. Suu Kyi is viewed as a defender of democratic and human rights in Burma, where the military holds immense power over civil society. According to an article by NPR, the specific corruption charges relate to the alleged misuse of state funds and allowing a cabinet minister to purchase a helicopter. Western experts generally assume that Suu Kyi’s trial is essentially for show, not unlike the trials that took place during the Stalin era in the Soviet Union. Despite Ms. Suu Kyi’s questionable actions regarding the minority Rohingya ethnic group, it seems unlikely that she is guilty of wrongdoing.
Suu Kyi’s trial and corruption charges appear to be a classic example of an authoritarian government attempting to remove a politician with democratic ideals through spurious allegations. Befitting a country where a military junta is in power, there is not much information on how deep corruption runs in Myanmar. However, there is a report authored by the Anti-Corruption Resource Centre detailing the different types of misconduct that affect civil society in Myanmar. For example, cronyism appears to be prevalent within the military, with high-ranking ministers selling state-run assets to close friends and associates with little transparency being observed. Myanmar also suffers from a “resource curse,” meaning that while it is blessed with many natural resources, corruption surrounding oil & gas exploration and logging is rampant. It seems very clear that the military junta sees Suu Kyi as a threat to their abuses and of their grip on power, so putting her in prison on politically motivated charges appears, from their perspective, to be the only option.
Crispin Corruption Report 