A demonstrator gestures a three-finger salute beside a placard that reads "say no, just trap - Myanmar's sham election crap" during a rally protesting against Myanmar's general election staged by the country's military government, outside the Myanmar embassy in Tokyo on December 28, 2025. Myanmar's heavily restricted polls began on December 28, with the junta touting the exercise as a return to democracy five years after it ousted the last elected government, triggering civil war. -- Photo by Philip FONG / AFP
BANGKOK (dpa): The son of jailed Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi strongly criticized the parliamentary elections staged by the military junta on Sunday, the first elections since the military coup rocked the South-East Asian country almost five years ago.
"This so-called election," staged by the junta and "backed by other dictators, is nothing more than a scam," Kim Aris said in a video posted on social media.
The elections have also been slammed as a "farce" by observers and human rights activists.
The vote, which is being held in stages, is the first since the coup almost five years ago, when generals deposed and arrested Suu Kyi. It remains unclear where exactly she is being held and whether she is well and safe.
"There can be no legitimacy or peace as long as the democratically elected president, my mother Aung San Suu Kyi, and all other democratically elected political leaders remain imprisoned," Aris said.
"The people in Burma have already elected their representatives and they all are in prison," he said. "Please do not legitimize this barbaric regime," he added, addressing the international community.
In September, Aris told the public of his mother's "worsening heart complications" and said no one knows if anyone is taking care of her. He called the military's behaviour cruel, life-threatening and unacceptable.
Suu Kyi campaigned for a non-violent democratization process in the 1980s and was placed under house arrest. She won the Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to combat oppression and social injustice in 1991.
She is popular in Myanmar but has been criticized worldwide for state discrimination against the Rohingya and her silence on violence against the Muslim minority. -- AFP
