Aung San Suu Kyi 'sounds strong' in first call in five years, but her son says she is isolated

On Thursday, inside the Myanmar embassy in London, Kim Aris picked up a phone and heard his mother's voice for the first time in more than five years. Aung San Suu Kyi is 81, deposed in the 2021 military coup, and has been held ever since. Aris, who has lived in the UK for most of his life and whose late father was a British historian, told the Guardian what he took from the call: "She still sounds certainly all there mentally, and physically she sounds strong."

The rest of what he described was bleaker. Aris said he does not believe anyone other than military or police personnel is around her, which in his reading amounts to solitary confinement. She has been moved to an unspecified location in the capital, Naypyidaw. He is still not sure where. His best guess is a fenced-off residence with a scrubby patch of land around it. He added that she is allowed no newspapers, radio or television, and that he thinks she is unaware of what is happening beyond her walls.

Aris welcomed the chance to speak with her, but he did not accept it at face value. He called the invitation part of a public relations campaign by the country's military leaders. Former junta chief Min Aung Hlaing has been trying to rebuild international diplomatic ties, and in April he exchanged his military fatigues for civilian clothes after elections that were widely condemned as a sham.

The call follows a run of carefully staged proofs of life. Activists have long demanded them for Aung San Suu Kyi and for scores of other political prisoners. In August she was photographed during a Red Cross visit. Last week a government spokesperson published images of her smiling in a wood-panelled room, as officials delivered two gardening books that Britain's King Charles had given her as gifts. A paper calendar on the wall behind her showed the date. Aris said such photo-ops are familiar stunts, used by the regime before to suggest his mother is being treated fairly. "She's been locked up for five years on trumped-up, politically motivated charges and she should be free," he said.

She is the daughter of Gen Aung San, the assassinated hero of national independence, and since the late 1980s has spent much of her life in and out of house arrest for leading pro-democracy movements. After decades of rule by generals and western sanctions, Myanmar had a brief democratic opening when she was allowed to run in the 2015 election, which her party won overwhelmingly. She became state counsellor under a civilian-military power-sharing arrangement.

Her international standing fell after the 2016-2017 mass killings and expulsions of Rohingya Muslims. She travelled to the international court of justice in The Hague, where she acknowledged that military units might have used "disproportionate force" but defended the government against accusations of genocide. Aris said his mother was never silent on the crisis, and that what she has said about it "could fill volumes". Under her leadership, he noted, Myanmar launched a domestic inquiry and appointed former UN chief Kofi Annan to head a commission.

Aris described her time in office as "always walking on a tightrope", since the military could strip away her fragile power at any moment. In his words, the nascent democracy was "holding on to things by a thread", and the generals did their best to undermine her. "I think in that respect they did a pretty good job," he said.

The 2021 coup set off a civil war that conflict monitors say has killed more than 100,000 people. Aris said global support for his mother has "dwindled incredibly" since the Rohingya crisis, and that the whole country now suffers from a lack of international attention. Many governments have called for her release, but she is no longer treated as the beloved figure she once was. He rejected the idea that neglect of Myanmar should be justified by what was done to the Rohingya.

What to watch now is whether the photographs, the Red Cross visit and the embassy call amount to anything beyond image-building, or whether they lead to a change in the conditions of her detention.