Daw Aung San Suu Kyi ‘Seriously Ill with Heart Disease’Myanmar’s 80-year-old democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is suffering from a worsening heart condition in a junta prison, her son said Thursday.

“It is deeply distressing to have heard my mother’s health has taken a turn for the worse,” Kim Aris told The Independent of the UK.

“She has had ongoing heart complications, which have undoubtedly been exacerbated by the conditions under which she is being held … and has asked to see a cardiologist from outside the prison,” Aris said.

“I have no way of knowing if this has been granted,” he added.

The Nobel Peace laureate has been held in solitary confinement since a military coup in February 2021 overturned her elected government.

In a Facebook video, Kim called the junta’s treatment “cruel, life-threatening, and unacceptable,” adding, “She must be freed.”

Former UK Foreign Secretary William Hague joined the chorus of concern, saying, “It is high time that Aung San Suu Kyi was released. It is also a moral and humanitarian imperative that she is given access to proper medical care without delay.”

The Nobel laureate, now 80, is in her fourth detention by successive military regimes since 1989.

An artist’s impression of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi being held in Junta prison / The Irrawaddy

Most recently, the junta sentenced her to 27 years in prison on trumped-up charges of corruption, and she has since been held incommunicado.

Several elected NLD leaders have been imprisoned, and some have died in junta custody or were released in critical condition just hours before their death.

Some 29,628 people have been arrested or detained since the coup, and 7,182 including 890 children and 1,806 women have been killed by the regime, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (AAPP).

The article appeared in irrawaddy