Free Aung San Suu Kyi, demand three former UK foreign secretaries
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The pro-democracy Nobel peace prize winner turned global pariah was toppled by the military leaders of Myanmar in 2021 and sentenced to 27 years in prison. Three former UK foreign secretaries have today called for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, currently imprisoned by a brutal military dictatorship in Myanmar.
![[Lord Hague told a new Independent documentary it was possible to be criticial of her “but also say we should be campaigning for her release”]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/18/15/Cancelled_DRAFT-5.0---GG-VO-READ.00_44_51_22.Still012.jpg)
William Hague, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw warned the ousted leader was jailed on trumped up charges and said she deserves the chance to lead her country democratically. She is believed to have been in solitary confinement for nearly four years after being sentenced to 27 years in jail.
![[Aung San Suu Kyi, the then leader of Myanmar's National League for Democracy, speaking at a rally on August 21, 2015 in Yangon]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/18/17/GettyImages-484755184.jpg)
The 79-year-old Nobel peace prize winner has become a deeply divisive and controversial figure after refusing to speak out against her country’s extreme violence against its Rohingya Muslim minority. Her fall from grace is explored in an Independent TV documentary published today, entitled Cancelled: The rise and fall of Aung San Suu Kyi, which takes an unbiased look at her life and the plight of Myanmar.
![[Suu Kyi, who studied at Oxford, married Michael Aris and raised her boys Alexander (pictured) and Kim in the UK before going back to Myanmar in 1988]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/18/17/sadasdasdUntitled-3.jpg)
Lord Hague, who welcomed Suu Kyi to London in 2012 when he was foreign secretary, said it was possible to be critical of the country’s former leader, “but also say we should be campaigning for her release”. Featuring in the documentary, he said: “She is a political prisoner on trumped up charges, imprisoned by a military regime in what seems very harsh circumstances.
