Politics
For all I know, she could be dead, says son of Myanmar’s Suu Kyi
- Nobel Peace Laureate’s health failing, says son Kim Aris.
- Upcoming “sham” election could prompt her release: Aris
- Aris urges Japan, other govt to up pressure on junta.
With her health failing and an information vacuum around Myanmar’s detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, her son worries that he may not even know if she passed away.
Kim Aris told Reuters he has not heard from his 80-year-old mother in years, and has received only sporadic, secondhand details about her heart, bone and gum problems since a 2021 military coup that deposed her government.
And while he rejects attempts by Myanmar’s junta to hold elections later this month, dismissed by many foreign governments as a sham aimed at legitimising military rule, he says it could provide an opening to ease his mother’s plight.
“She’s got ongoing health issues. Nobody has seen her in over two years. She hasn’t been allowed contact with her legal team, never mind her family,” he said in an interview in Tokyo. “For all I know, she could be dead already.”
“I imagine (Myanmar junta leader) Min Aung Hlaing has his own agenda when it comes to my mother. If he does want to use her to try and appease the general population before or after the elections by either releasing her or moving her to house arrest, then at least that would be something,” he added.
A Myanmar junta spokesman did not respond to calls seeking comment.
Myanmar’s military has a history of releasing prisoners to mark holidays or important events.
Nobel Peace Laureate Suu Kyi was freed in 2010 days after an election, ending a previous long period of detention largely spent at her colonial-style family home on Yangon’s Inya Lake.
She went on to become Myanmar’s de-facto leader after elections in 2015, the first openly contested vote in a quarter century, though her international image was later tarnished by accusations of genocide committed against her country’s Muslim Rohingya minority.
‘Small window of opportunity’
Myanmar has been in turmoil since the 2021 coup, which triggered an armed rebellion that has captured swathes of territory across the country.
Suu Kyi is serving a 27-year sentence for offences including incitement, corruption and election fraud, all of which she denies.
Aris said he believes she is being held in the capital Naypyitaw, and in the last letter he received from his mother two years ago she complained about the extreme temperatures in her cell during the summer and winter months.
With conflicts erupting all over the world, Aris worries that people are forgetting about Myanmar.
He is trying to capitalise on the upcoming elections — the first since the coup which are set to be held in phases from December 28 — to get foreign governments like Japan to exert more pressure on the junta and call for his mother’s release.
“Because of the upcoming elections that the military are trying to stage, which we all know are completely unfair, and so far from being free that it would be laughable if it wasn’t so lamentable, I need to use this small window of opportunity,” he said.
“In the past, when my mother was held in higher regard by the international community, then it was much harder for people to ignore what’s happening in Burma. But since her position was undermined through the crisis in Rakhine, that’s no longer the case,” he added, using the country’s former name.
Aris, a British national who kept a low profile until a few years ago, maintains his mother was “not complicit” in what the United Nations called a genocidal campaign by the military against the Rohingya in Rakhine state in 2016-17.
While she was de-facto leader, Myanmar’s constitution limited Suu Kyi’s power over the military. She admitted that war crimes may have been committed at an international tribunal in The Hague in 2020 but denied genocide.
During his trip to Japan, Aris said he met with various Japanese politicians and government officials to press them to take a stronger stand against the junta and reject the elections.
Asked what his mother would think of his efforts, he said: “I think she’d be incredibly sad that I’ve had to do this. She’s always wanted me to not have to get involved. But I don’t really have a choice at the moment. I am her son after all. And if I’m not doing it, I can’t expect anybody else to do it.”
SYDNEY: An angry crowd clashed with Australian police outside a hospital treating the suspected killer of a five-year-old Indigenous girl in the outback town of Alice Springs.
Images on local media Friday showed teargas in the air, a police van in flames, and crowds yelling at armed officers keeping people at bay during the overnight confrontation.
The violence followed the discovery Thursday of a body south of Alice Springs believed to be that of the little girl, referred to at her family’s request as Kumanjayi Little Baby.
She had disappeared from an Indigenous community camp called Old Timers late on Saturday night, sparking a vast, days-long search on foot, horseback, and by helicopter that gripped much of the country.
Police said a formal autopsy would be held on the child’s body, which was found about five kilometres (three miles) from the camp.
Hours after her body was found, police announced they had arrested the suspect, Jefferson Lewis.
‘He was unconscious’
Lewis was beaten until he was unconscious after turning himself in to Indigenous community members on Thursday evening at a camp by Alice Springs, in central Australia.
When police and emergency services intervened, they too came under attack, said Northern Territory Police Force Commissioner Martin Dole.
“At the time of his apprehension by us, he was unconscious and he was in the process of being treated by St John’s Ambulance when they were set upon, as were the police,” he told a news conference.
Lewis was then taken to hospital.
“A large crowd gathered and tried to gain access to that hospital,” the police commissioner said.
“We called out all the resources we had available to quell that violent disturbance. And just let me say that the behaviour that we saw last night cannot be explained away, excused or accepted.”
Dole said “a number” of police were injured at the hospital, and one officer was treated for a head wound inflicted during the suspect´s arrest.
Ambulance and fire crew members were also attacked, he said, with one fire and rescue officer receiving a “significant facial injury”.
‘Sorry business’
One woman was being investigated for allegedly trying to set a police car alight.
Many people outside the hospital shouted that Lewis must face “payback”, public broadcaster ABC reported, referring to a traditional punishment in central Australian Indigenous communities.
“I just call for calm across the community,” Dole said.
Police said they removed Lewis for his safety from the hospital to the Northern Territory capital of Darwin, where he was being held in custody.
He is expected to face charges in the coming days.
Northern Territory Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro said the girl’s death was the realisation of “our worst nightmares”.
But it was no excuse for violence, she said, recalling how the community had united to search for the missing child.
“This week, we’ve seen this town come together like never before — hundreds of people walking shoulder to shoulder through the long buffel grass, through the bush, to make sure we left no stone unturned,” Finocchiaro said.
“I don’t want last night to take away from that extraordinary effort.”
Robin Granites, a spokesman for the family and an elder of the Warlpiri Indigenous group, called for calm in the community.
“It is time now for sorry business, to show respect for our family and have space for grieving and remembering,” he said in a statement.
“We need to be strong for each other, we must respect family and cultural practice.”
Some 287 candidates will be considered for the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize, the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said on Thursday, with US President Donald Trump likely to be among the nominees.
Of this year’s nominations, 208 are individuals and 79 are organisations, said Kristian Berg Harpviken, adding that there were many new nominees compared to last year.
“Since I am new in the job, one of the things that has to some extent surprised me is how much renewal there is from year to year on the list,” Harpviken said in an interview. He has held the position since January 2025.
Despite the number of conflicts rising worldwide and international cooperation under pressure, the award remains relevant, he added.
“The Peace Prize is even more important in a period like the one we’re living in,” he said. “There is as much good work, if not more, than ever.”
Trump likely nominated, but not confirmed
The leaders of Cambodia, Israel and Pakistan have said they nominated Trump for this year’s prize. Their nominations, if made, would have been done in spring and summer 2025, and they are therefore valid given the deadline was January 31.
There is no way of verifying they have done as they have said as nominations remain secret for 50 years and Harpviken declined to say on Thursday whether Trump had been nominated.
A nomination is not an endorsement by the award body.
In addition to committee members, thousands of people worldwide can propose names: members of governments and parliaments; current heads of state; university professors of history, social sciences, law and philosophy; and former Nobel Peace Prize laureates, among others.
Many names appear on betting sites giving odds on this year’s possible laureates, from Russia’s Yulia Navalnaya, the wife of the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, to Pope Leo and Sudan’s Emergency Response Rooms, a volunteer aid group, among others.
Concern for health of jailed Iranian laureate
Harpviken said the committee was deeply concerned about the health of the 2023 Peace Prize laureate, Iranian human rights activist Narges Mohammadi, which is worsening after she suffered a heart attack in prison.
Her supporters said on Wednesday her life was in imminent danger.
“Her sister was able to visit her in prison yesterday and the reports coming out after that are actually quite alarming as to her health condition,” said Harpviken.
“We see there is a lot of international pressure now. So we hope that the Iranian authorities do pay attention to that and release her so that she can have proper medical treatment.”
Who else could be nominated?
Among possible nominees for this year’s prize are Lisa Murkowski, the US senator for Alaska, and Aaja Chemnitz, a member of the Danish parliament elected from Greenland, according to the Norwegian lawmaker who nominated them both.
“Together they have worked relentlessly to build trust and to secure a peaceful development of the Arctic region over many years,” said the lawmaker, Lars Haltbrekken.
Greenland has been in particular focus this year due to Trump’s relentless push to acquire the island from Nato ally Denmark.
This year’s Nobel Peace Prize will be announced on October 9, while the ceremony will take place on December 10.
A US federal jury convicted an Afghan man on Wednesday of providing support to the Daesh in Afghanistan but failed to agree on whether he was involved in the deadly 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul airport.
Mohammad Sharifullah, a member of the Daesh-Khorasan, was convicted in Virginia of conspiracy to provide material support to a terrorist organisation.
President Donald Trump, in an address to Congress last year, had described Sharifullah as the “top terrorist responsible” for the Kabul airport attack that killed at least 170 Afghans and 13 American troops.
The jury found Sharifullah guilty of providing support to Daesh but deadlocked after two days of deliberations on whether he played a role in the Kabul airport suicide bombing.
According to prosecutors, Sharifullah scouted out the route to the airport where the suicide bomber later detonated his device among packed crowds trying to flee days after the Taliban seized control of Kabul.
The United States withdrew its last troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, ending a chaotic evacuation of tens of thousands of Afghans who had rushed to Kabul’s airport in the hopes of boarding a flight out of the country.
Sharifullah was extradited to the United States in March 2025 and put on trial in Alexandria on the outskirts of the US capital.
He faces up to 20 years in prison.
According to the US authorities, Sharifullah was involved in a number of Daesh-Khorasan attacks between 2016 and his arrest by Pakistani authorities in 2025.
They included a June 2016 suicide bombing that targeted Nepali security guards protecting the Canadian embassy in Kabul.
Sharifullah was accused of conducting surveillance and transporting the suicide bomber to the attack site.
He was also accused of giving weapons instructions to Daesh-Khorasan gunmen who attacked the Crocus City Hall near Moscow in March 2024.
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