The son of Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi said she sounded “fairly healthy” after speaking to the detained ex-democratic leader on Thursday for the first time in more than five years.
Suu Kyi, 81, is under house arrest in the capital, Naypyidaw, according to Myanmar authorities, where she has been sequestered since being unseated in a 2021 military coup.
“She was sounding fairly healthy,” Kim Aris, who lives in the UK, said after the telephone conversation. It was the first time he had spoken to his mother in more than five years, he said. “She was able to say she was in good health, but being 81, things aren’t getting any better.”
News of the conversation was the second rare update on Suu Kyi this week, after Myanmar authorities on Monday published pictures of her receiving a package sent by Britain’s King Charles III. Analysts say Myanmar’s rulers are increasingly advertising Suu Kyi’s well-being and her contacts with the outside world, as they bid to shake off their post-coup pariah status abroad.