Photos: Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi poses for a portrait in Yangon, Myanmar, in 2010. A month earlier, she had been released from house arrest.
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In pictures: Aung San Suu Kyi

Updated 0813 GMT (1613 HKT) August 1, 2023

Aung San Suu Kyi poses for a portrait in Yangon, Myanmar, in 2010. A month earlier, she had been released from house arrest.
Drn/Getty Images

Myanmar's military seized power in a coup in February 2021, detaining the country's democratically elected civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other top government figures.

The coup came after months of increasing friction between the civilian government and the powerful military, known as the Tatmadaw, over alleged election irregularities.

Suu Kyi has been convicted of multiple offenses, including electoral fraud and receiving bribes, according to sources.

She has denied all of the charges levied against her, according to the source, and her lawyers have said they are politically motivated.

Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, is widely considered a hero of democracy in Myanmar. After spending 15 years under house arrest as part of a decades-long fight against military rule, she led her party to a landslide victory in Myanmar's 2015 elections, establishing the country's first civilian government.

But her international reputation has been tarnished in recent years. Suu Kyi came under fire for failing to speak out against numerous atrocities allegedly carried out by the military against Rohingya Muslims. Hundreds of thousands of the persecuted ethnic minority were forced into neighboring Bangladesh during violent military operations in 2016 and 2017.