Aung San Suu Kyi's son appeals to China's Xi Jinping to secure her release from Myanmar jail

Beijing: Myanmar's imprisoned pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's son Kim Aris has appealed to Chinese President Xi Jinping to put pressure on the Junta to release his mother from jail.

The 48-year-old British-born, who stayed away from politics, has been appealing to the world leaders recently to help with the release of his 80-year-old jailed mother, who reportedly suffered from heart problems.

“I appeal to President Xi Jinping to call for her release and to do more to put pressure on the junta … to make sure that those who should be freed are freed,” Aris has been quoted as saying by the Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post on Friday.

“China has been calling for May May’s (Suu Kyi’s) release, according to my sources,” he said, using the Burmese term for mother.

He said he believed that Chinese officials “want to see her as much as anyone else and they have been asking for access”.

Chinese officials “have not been given access to her, as far as I am aware, just as nobody else has”, he added.

Aris invited anyone outside the prison to try to see her, for “then at least someone could confirm she is alive”.

“I worry all the time that my mother might die in prison. The conditions in prison are horrendous,” he said.

Suu Kyi, 80, has spent a total of 19 years in detention since 1989, first under house arrest and now in solitary confinement in prison. She is the recipient of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.

She served as State Counsellor of Myanmar and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2016 to 2021 after winning the elections, and continued Myanmar’s close ties with China.

She was arrested and ousted from power by yet another military coup in 2021, after which she continued to languish in prison.    Aris said he believed Suu Kyi had “a better relationship with China” than junta leader Min Aung Hlaing, who led the coup against his mother and her ruling National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

“My mother and the NLD … had a good, productive working relationship with China before the coup,” Aris said. “She was trying to develop that relationship … [which] she realised was very significant for her country.” “Things were developing in Burma, and China could do business with Burma and trust that those business interests would see fruition of some sort and not be destroyed by other people’s greed,” he added, referring to Myanmar’s former name.

Xi met Suu Kyi in 2020 during his two-day state visit to Myanmar.

The visit resulted in 33 agreements to shore up key projects that formed part of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s plan to grow global trade.

They included speeding up the implementation of the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, a deep-sea port in Rakhine state and a new city project in Yangon.

Before that, Suu Kyi visited China in 2015 and 2016.

China is Myanmar’s second-largest foreign investor, pouring more than USD 7.7 billion into the country in the 2024-25 financial year and more than USD three billion so far in the 2025-26 financial year, according to the report.