After nearly six years, Aung San Suu Kyi's son hears his mother's voice

After nearly six years in detention, Myanmar's ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi's first words to her son were a question about his health. For Kim Aris, the conversation with his 81-year-old mother was their first direct one since the 2021 military coup.

Mother and son spoke by phone for 20 minutes on Thursday. Aris, who lives in London, believes the military monitored the conversation. Even so, that brief call offered a rare glimpse of how the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate is being held.

Suu Kyi was first sentenced in 2021, with consecutive trials through 2022 bringing her total sentence to 33 years on corruption and electoral fraud charges. The United States, Western countries and human rights groups have condemned those charges as fabricated. The sentence was later reduced, leaving her with 18 years still to serve.

Little has been known about her condition since the coup. That coup triggered a civil war that, according to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data monitoring organisation, has killed about 100,000 people, while the United Nations says the conflict has displaced millions.

Kim Aris, 49, is a carpenter by profession. He has campaigned for his mother's release and sought to raise awareness of the crisis engulfing the Southeast Asian nation. He said his mother is actually alive and well, and that hearing her voice has reassured him.

Khaing Khaing Soe, a spokesperson for Myanmar's military-backed president, said on social media that Aris spoke with Suu Kyi by telephone through Myanmar's Embassy in London, and shared separate photographs of the two.

Aris said he had received almost no word from her until now — just a single censored letter three years ago and occasional second-hand scraps of information. From the call, he learned she is being held at a residence somewhere in the surroundings of the capital, Naypyidaw.

He believes police and military personnel surround the building, which is fenced off, with a scrubby, nondescript garden which he believes she is allowed to go out into. In Aris's assessment, she is basically being held in solitary confinement even if she is not in a prison cell.

She was permitted to read books, he said. But he does not think she gets any news — no radio, no television, no newspapers. That isolation is one of the hardest aspects of her long detention.

Her health has long been a worry for the family. While she sounded strong, Aris said, she is still in a lot of pain because her hand is playing up. She told him she has tendonitis, that it is very painful, and at points she cannot even use her hand. She also said she gets a health checkup every six months.

Aris believes food is cooked at the residence and sometimes delivered by her lawyers, though not directly to the premises. He hopes to send her care packages. She asked for some healthy foods and some nice foods — something of a treat — half and half, so it was not too much of either.

Aris is thinking of including Ben's Cookies, a brand founded in Oxford, England, where she raised her two sons with her late husband, the British scholar Michael Aris, before leaving for Burma, now Myanmar, in 1988 to care for her ailing mother. He added that some chocolate would not go amiss either.

Because the conversation was likely monitored by Myanmar's security forces, Aris said, there was nothing they could talk about that was too sensitive, including Myanmar's civil war. He recalled her years of house arrest in her Yangon family home between 1989 and 2010, when the regime would photograph parcels sent to her and use that as propaganda.

A spokesperson for the military-backed government did not respond to a request for comment. Aris believes Myanmar's generals are feeling international pressure as coup leader Min Aung Hlaing, installed as president after a military-engineered election in January, travels abroad seeking legitimacy. In his words, it is an indication the military wants to present a better image, while actually giving very little.

Nay Phone Latt, spokesperson for the exiled National Unity Government, believes the regime dares not release Suu Kyi; if she is released, her strength will combine with the revolution, and that is what Min Aung Hlaing fears. Richard Horsey, senior Asia adviser at the International Crisis Group, said Suu Kyi's status is potentially the most valuable card Min Aung Hlaing holds, but he is very reluctant to play it.

The US State Department said the United States remains concerned about everyone it considers unjustly detained and continues to call for their release. In August it renewed its call for Suu Kyi's immediate and unconditional release. For now, Aris thinks the call might be a one-off, but he hopes it shines a light on what is happening to many others in Myanmar as well.