Head of Aung San Suu Kyi’s former Oxford college backs calls for her release
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Exclusive: Lady Elish Angiolini, the principal of St Hugh’s College, has written to the government of Myanmar. The head of Aung San Suu Kyi’s former Oxford college has backed calls from three former foreign secretaries for her to be freed. Lady Elish Angiolini, the principal of St Hugh’s College, has written to the government of Myanmar seeking her release.
![[Aung San Suu Kyi as an undergraduate at Oxford]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/12/18/17/aungfsf.jpg)
William Hague, Sir Malcolm Rifkind and Jack Straw argue the ousted leader was jailed on trumped-up charges by the brutal military dictatorship and deserves the chance to lead her country democratically. Ms Suu Kyi, who faces 27 years in prison, is believed to have spent long periods in solitary confinement since her arrest by the junta in February 2021.
![[Lady Elish Angiolini, who also led the Angiolini Inquiry into Sarah Everard killer Wayne Couzens]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/11/05/12/791f2f76b6b07d24cb620372636e6dc3Y29udGVudHNlYXJjaGFwaSwxNzMwODkzODMw-2.75486319.jpg)
The 79-year-old Nobel Peace Prize winner has become a deeply divisive and controversial figure internationally after refusing to speak out on her country’s extreme violence against its Rohingya Muslim minority. Her fall from grace is explored in an Independent TV documentary entitled Cancelled: The rise and fall of Aung San Suu Kyi, which takes an unbiased look at her life and the plight of Myanmar.
In the documentary, Lord Hague, who welcomed Ms Suu Kyi to London in 2012, said it was possible to be critical of the country’s former de facto prime minister “but also say we should be campaigning for her release”. He said: “She is a political prisoner on trumped-up charges, imprisoned by a military regime in what seems very harsh circumstances.
