BANGKOK: A court in military-ruled Myanmar convicted the country’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi of corruption Friday, sentencing her to seven years in prison in the last of a string of criminal cases against her, a legal official said.
The court’s action leaves her with a total of 33 years to serve in prison after a series of politically tinged prosecutions since the army toppled her elected government in February 2021.
The case that ended Friday involved five offenses under the anti-corruption law and followed earlier convictions on seven other corruption counts, each of which was punishable by up to 15 years in prison and a fine.
The 77-year-old Suu Kyi has also been convicted of several other offenses, including illegally importing and possessing walkie-talkies, violating coronavirus restrictions, breaching the country’s official secrets act, sedition and election fraud.
Her previous convictions had landed her with a total of 26 years’ imprisonment.
Suu Kyi’s supporters and independent analysts say the numerous charges against her and her allies are an attempt to legitimize the military’s seizure of power while eliminating her from politics before an election it has promised for 2023.
In the five counts of corruption decided Friday, Suu Kyi was alleged to have abused her position and caused a loss of state funds by neglecting to follow financial regulations in granting permission to Win Myat Aye, a Cabinet member in her former government, to hire, buy and maintain a helicopter.
Suu Kyi was the de facto head of government, holding the title of state counsellor. Win Myint, who was president in her government, was a co-defendant in the same case.
Friday’s verdict, delivered on the outskirts of the capital Naypyitaw, was made known by a legal official who insisted on anonymity for fear of being punished by the authorities. The trial was closed to the media, diplomats and spectators, and her lawyers were barred by a gag order from talking about it.
The legal official said Suu Kyi received sentences of three years for each of four charges, to be served concurrently, and four years for the charge related to the helicopter purchase, for a total of seven years. Win Myint received the same sentences.
Win Myat Aye, at the center of the case, escaped arrest and is now Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Disaster Management in the National Unity Government, established by the military’s opponents as a parallel administration by elected legislators who were barred from taking their seats when the army seized power last year. The military has declared NUG to be an outlawed “terrorist organization.”
The defendants denied all charges, and her lawyers are expected to appeal in the coming days. The official also said both Suu Kyi and Win Myint appeared to be in good health.
Cases against Suu Kyi were manufactured and court verdicts predetermined by the military, Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said in an emailed statement.
“Due process and a free and fair trial were never remotely possible under the circumstances of this political persecution against her,” he added.
The end of the court cases against Suu Kyi, at least for now, raises the possibility that she would be allowed outside visitors, which she has been denied since she was detained.
Myanmar’s military rulers, who have faced diplomatic and political sanctions for their human rights abuses and suppression of democracy, have repeatedly denied all requests to meet with her, including from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which seeks to help mediate an end to the crisis in Myanmar that some United Nations experts have characterized as a civil war because of the armed opposition to military rule.
An August statement from the military government said that, “depending on the circumstances after the completion of the judiciary process, we will consider how to proceed.”
Due to her age, the 33 years in prison that Suu Kyi now faces “amount to an effective life sentence against her,” said Robertson, adding that the convictions were aimed at keeping her out of politics and undermining her party’s landslide 2020 election victory.
Nay Phone Latt, a spokesperson for the National Unity Government opposition group, charged Myanmar’s judiciary with being “completely unjust.”
He said in a online message that the ruling military council might release Suu Kyi and other prisoners or make similar gestures if it is necessary for their own interests, but revolutionary forces would move forward without losing sight of their goal of a democratic federal union without the involvement of the military.
Suu Kyi is being held in a newly constructed separate building in the prison in Naypyitaw, near the courthouse where her trial was held, with three policewomen whose duty is to assist her.
Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar’s martyred independence hero Gen. Aung San, spent almost 15 years as a political prisoner under house arrest between 1989 and 2010.
Her tough stand against the military rule in Myanmar turned her into a symbol of nonviolent struggle for democracy, and won her the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
Her National League for Democracy party initially came to power after easily winning the 2015 general election, ushering in a true civilian government for the first time since a 1962 military coup.
But after coming to power, Suu Kyi was criticized for showing deference to the military while ignoring atrocities it is credibly accused of committing in a 2017 crackdown on the Muslim Rohingya minority.
Her National League for Democracy won a landslide victory again in the 2020 election, but less than three months afterwards, elected lawmakers were kept from taking their seats in Parliament and top members of her government and party were detained.
The army said it acted because there had been massive voting fraud in the 2020 election, but independent election observers did not find any major irregularities.
The army’s takeover in 2021 triggered widespread peaceful protests that security forces tried to crush with deadly forces and that soon erupted into armed resistance.
Myanmar security forces have killed at least 2,685 civilians and arrested 16,651, according to a detailed list compiled by the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a non-governmental organization that tracks killings and arrests.
Court in Myanmar again finds Suu Kyi guilty of corruption
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Court in Myanmar again finds Suu Kyi guilty of corruption
- Oxford-educated Nobel laureate has spent much of her political life in detention under military governments
India opposes COP29 finance deal after it is adopted
BAKU: India strongly objected to a climate finance deal agreed at the United Nations COP29 summit on Sunday, but their objection was raised after the deal was formally adopted by consensus.
“I regret to say that this document is nothing more than an optical illusion. This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face. Therefore, we oppose the adoption of this document,” Indian delegation representative Chandni Raina told the closing plenary session of the summit.
UN climate chief says ‘no time for victory laps’ after COP29 deal
BAKU, Azerbaijan: UN climate chief Simon Stiell on Sunday said it was “no time for victory laps” after nations at COP29 in Azerbaijan agreed a bitterly negotiated finance deal.
“No country got everything they wanted, and we leave Baku with a mountain of work still to do. So this is no time for victory laps,” Stiell said in a statement.
Mass rape trial sparks demonstrations across France
- Police sources said 35,000 people had turned out across the country, while organizers put the figure at 100,000
PARIS: Tens of thousands demonstrated in major French cities Saturday against violence targeting women, as campaigners push for the country to learn from a mass rape trial that has shocked the public.
The prosecution in the southern city Avignon is in its final stages for 51 men, including one who drugged his wife over the course of a decade and dozens of others charged with accepting his invitations to abuse her at their home.
Out on the street, “the more of us there are, the more visible we are, this is everyone’s business, not just women,” said Peggy Plou, an elected official from the Indre-et-Loire region in western France who had made the trip to Paris.
Thousands of people marched in the capital alone, mostly women but including some children and men. Police put the turnout there at 12,500, while organizers said 80,000.
Police sources said 35,000 people had turned out across the country, while organizers put the figure at 100,000.
Hundreds also turned out in other major cities including Marseille in the south, Lille in the northeast and Rennes in the northwest. Local officials in Bordeaux, in the southwest, put the turnout there at 1,600.
Many demonstrators carried signs with variations on the slogan “Shame must switch sides,” popularised by the plaintiff in the Avignon trial, Gisele Pelicot.
She has become a feminist hero for choosing public hearings in her case rather than a trial behind closed doors, despite their painful content.
“A law about consent must be put in place very quickly. Just because someone doesn’t say something, doesn’t mean that they agree” to sexual contact, said Marie-Claire Abiker, 78, a retired nurse who marched in Paris.
France’s legal definition of rape calls it “any act of sexual penetration... by violence, constraint, threats or surprise” but includes no language about consent — a key demand of women’s rights groups especially since the MeToo movement launched in the late 2010s.
“In 2018, there were basically only women (demonstrating). Today there are, let’s say, 30 percent men. That’s really great news,” said Amy Bah, a member of the NousToutes (All of us women) feminist group protesting in Lille.
“I feel like this is my business too, we each have our role to play, especially men,” said Arnaud Garcette, 38, at the Marseille demonstration in the city’s historic port with his two children.
“We’re at the source of the problem, and at the source of the solutions too,” he added.
The demonstrations, called by more than 400 campaign groups, come two days before the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on Monday.
Equality Minister Salima Saa has promised “concrete and effective” measures to coincide with the global day.
According to a report in Sunday’s Tribune Dimanche weekly, Prime Minister Michel Barnier will announce measures including increased training for police officers and more support for victims of domestic violence who leave their home.
The campaigners who organized Saturday’s protests are calling for more far-reaching measures, including a dedicated 2.6 billion-euro ($2.7 billion) budget and a stronger legal framework to tackle the problem.
During his first term as French president, Emmanuel Macron vowed to prioritize the cause of equality between men and women and to work to eliminate violence against women.
US reels from rain, snow as second round of bad weather approaches for Thanksgiving week
- A winter storm warning in California’s Sierra Nevada on Saturday was in effect through Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service’s Sacramento office, with heavy snow expected at higher elevations and wind gusts potentially reaching 55 mph (88 kph
WINDSOR, California: The US was reeling from snow and rain on Saturday with a second round of bad weather threatening to disrupt holiday travel ahead of Thanksgiving. A person was found dead in a vehicle submerged in floodwaters in California, which braced for more precipitation while still grappling with flooding and small landslides from a previous storm. And thousands in the Pacific Northwest remained without power after multiple days in the dark.
A winter storm warning in California’s Sierra Nevada on Saturday was in effect through Tuesday, according to the National Weather Service’s Sacramento office, with heavy snow expected at higher elevations and wind gusts potentially reaching 55 mph (88 kph). Total snowfall of roughly 4 feet (1.2 meters) was forecast, with the heaviest accumulations coming Monday and Tuesday.
Forecasters said the Midwest and Great Lakes regions will see rain and snow Monday, and the East Coast will be the most impacted on Thanksgiving and Black Friday.
A low pressure system will bring rain to the Southeast early Thursday before heading to the Northeast, where areas from Boston to New York could see rain and strong winds. Parts of northern New Hampshire, northern Maine and the Adirondacks could get snow. If the system tracks further inland, the forecast would call for less snow for the mountains and more rain.
Deadly ‘bomb cyclone’ on West Coast
The storm on the West Coast arrived in the Pacific Northwest earlier this week, killing two people and knocking out power to hundreds of thousands, mostly in the Seattle area, before its strong winds moved through Northern California. The system roared ashore on the West Coast on Tuesday as a ” bomb cyclone,” which occurs when a cyclone intensifies rapidly. It unleashed fierce winds that toppled trees onto roads, vehicles and homes.
Santa Rosa, California, saw its wettest three-day period on record with about 12.5 inches (32 centimeters) of rain falling by Friday evening, according to the National Weather Service in the Bay Area. On Saturday vineyards in Windsor, about 10 miles (16 kilometers) to the north, were flooded.
To the west, rescue crews in Guerneville recovered a body inside a vehicle bobbing in floodwaters around 11:30 a.m. Saturday, according to Rob Dillion, a Sonoma County sheriff’s deputy and spokesperson. The deceased was presumed to be a victim of the storm, but an autopsy had not yet been conducted.
Dominick Conti, a 19-year-old volunteer firefighter, and a friend drove around the Santa Rosa area Friday helping people whose vehicles were swamped. With his 2006 Dodge Ram pickup truck and a set of ropes, they were able to rescue the driver of a sedan that stalled out in water, a truck stuck in a giant mudhole and a farmer stranded on a dirt road.
Tens of thousands remain without power in Seattle area
Some 80,000 people in the Seattle area were still without electricity after this season’s strongest atmospheric river — a long plume of moisture that forms over an ocean and flows over land. Crews worked to clear streets of downed lines, branches and other debris, while cities opened warming centers so people heading into their fourth day without power could get warm food and plug in their cellphones and other devices.
The power came back in the afternoon at Katie Skipper’s home in North Bend, about 30 miles (50 kilometers) east of the city in the foothills of the Cascades, after being out since Tuesday. It was tiring to take cold showers, rely on a wood stove for warmth and use a generator to keep the refrigerator cold, Skipper said, but those inconveniences paled in comparison to the damage other people suffered, such as from fallen trees.
“That’s really sad and scary,” she said.
Northeast gets much-needed precipitation
Another storm brought rain to New York and New Jersey, where rare wildfires have raged in recent weeks, and heavy snow to northeastern Pennsylvania. Parts of West Virginia were under a blizzard warning through Saturday morning, with up to 2 feet (61 centimeters) of snow and high winds making travel treacherous.
Despite the mess, the precipitation was expected to help ease drought conditions after an exceptionally dry fall.
“It’s not going to be a drought buster, but it’s definitely going to help when all this melts,” said Bryan Greenblatt, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Binghamton, New York.
Heavy snow fell in northeastern Pennsylvania, including the Pocono Mountains. Higher elevations reported up to 17 inches (43 centimeters), with lesser accumulations in valley cities like Scranton and Wilkes-Barre. Less than 80,000 customers in 10 counties lost power, and the state transportation department imposed speed restrictions on some highways.
Parts of West Virginia also experienced their first significant snowfall of the season Friday and overnight Saturday, with up to 10 inches (25.4 centimeters) in the higher elevations of the Allegheny Mountains. Some areas were under a blizzard warning.
The precipitation helped put a dent in the state’s worst drought in at least two decades. It also was a boost for West Virginia ski resorts preparing to open their slopes in the weeks ahead.
After Trump’s Project 2025 denials, he is tapping its authors and influencers for key roles
- As the blueprint for a hard-right turn in America became a liability during the 2024 campaign, Trump denied knowing anything about the “ridiculous and abysmal” plans written in part by his first-term aides and allies
- Now he is stocking his new administration with key players in effort he temporarily shunned, notably Russell Vought as budget head, Tom Homan as “border czar;” and Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy
WASHINGTON: As a former and potentially future president, Donald Trump hailed what would become Project 2025 as a road map for “exactly what our movement will do” with another crack at the White House.
As the blueprint for a hard-right turn in America became a liability during the 2024 campaign, Trump pulled an about-face. He denied knowing anything about the “ridiculous and abysmal” plans written in part by his first-term aides and allies.
Now, after being elected the 47th president on Nov. 5, Trump is stocking his second administration with key players in the detailed effort he temporarily shunned. Most notably, Trump has tapped Russell Vought for an encore as director of the Office of Management and Budget; Tom Homan, his former immigration chief, as “border czar;” and immigration hard-liner Stephen Miller as deputy chief of policy.
Those moves have accelerated criticisms from Democrats who warn that Trump’s election hands government reins to movement conservatives who spent years envisioning how to concentrate power in the West Wing and impose a starkly rightward shift across the US government and society.
Trump and his aides maintain that he won a mandate to overhaul Washington. But they maintain the specifics are his alone.
“President Trump never had anything to do with Project 2025,” said Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt in a statement. “All of President Trumps’ Cabinet nominees and appointments are whole-heartedly committed to President Trump’s agenda, not the agenda of outside groups.”
Here is a look at what some of Trump’s choices portend for his second presidency.
As budget chief, Vought envisions a sweeping, powerful perch
The Office of Management and Budget director, a role Vought held under Trump previously and requires Senate confirmation, prepares a president’s proposed budget and is generally responsible for implementing the administration’s agenda across agencies.
The job is influential but Vought made clear as author of a Project 2025 chapter on presidential authority that he wants the post to wield more direct power.
“The Director must view his job as the best, most comprehensive approximation of the President’s mind,” Vought wrote. The OMB, he wrote, “is a President’s air-traffic control system” and should be “involved in all aspects of the White House policy process,” becoming “powerful enough to override implementing agencies’ bureaucracies.”
Trump did not go into such details when naming Vought but implicitly endorsed aggressive action. Vought, the president-elect said, “knows exactly how to dismantle the Deep State” — Trump’s catch-all for federal bureaucracy — and would help “restore fiscal sanity.”
In June, speaking on former Trump aide Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast, Vought relished the potential tension: “We’re not going to save our country without a little confrontation.”
Vought could help Musk and Trump remake government’s role and scope
The strategy of further concentrating federal authority in the presidency permeates Project 2025’s and Trump’s campaign proposals. Vought’s vision is especially striking when paired with Trump’s proposals to dramatically expand the president’s control over federal workers and government purse strings — ideas intertwined with the president-elect tapping mega-billionaire Elon Musk and venture capitalist Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a “Department of Government Efficiency.”
Trump in his first term sought to remake the federal civil service by reclassifying tens of thousands of federal civil service workers — who have job protection through changes in administration — as political appointees, making them easier to fire and replace with loyalists. Currently, only about 4,000 of the federal government’s roughly 2 million workers are political appointees. President Joe Biden rescinded Trump’s changes. Trump can now reinstate them.
Meanwhile, Musk’s and Ramaswamy’s sweeping “efficiency” mandates from Trump could turn on an old, defunct constitutional theory that the president — not Congress — is the real gatekeeper of federal spending. In his “Agenda 47,” Trump endorsed so-called “impoundment,” which holds that when lawmakers pass appropriations bills, they simply set a spending ceiling, but not a floor. The president, the theory holds, can simply decide not to spend money on anything he deems unnecessary.
Vought did not venture into impoundment in his Project 2025 chapter. But, he wrote, “The President should use every possible tool to propose and impose fiscal discipline on the federal government. Anything short of that would constitute abject failure.”
Trump’s choice immediately sparked backlash.
“Russ Vought is a far-right ideologue who has tried to break the law to give President Trump unilateral authority he does not possess to override the spending decisions of Congress (and) who has and will again fight to give Trump the ability to summarily fire tens of thousands of civil servants,” said Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, a Democrat and outgoing Senate Appropriations chairwoman.
Reps. Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico, leading Democrats on the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, said Vought wants to “dismantle the expert federal workforce” to the detriment of Americans who depend on everything from veterans’ health care to Social Security benefits.
“Pain itself is the agenda,” they said.
Homan and Miller reflect Trump’s and Project 2025’s immigration overlap
Trump’s protests about Project 2025 always glossed over overlaps in the two agendas. Both want to reimpose Trump-era immigration limits. Project 2025 includes a litany of detailed proposals for various US immigration statutes, executive branch rules and agreements with other countries — reducing the number of refugees, work visa recipients and asylum seekers, for example.
Miller is one of Trump’s longest-serving advisers and architect of his immigration ideas, including his promise of the largest deportation force in US history. As deputy policy chief, which is not subject to Senate confirmation, Miller would remain in Trump’s West Wing inner circle.
“America is for Americans and Americans only,” Miller said at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally on Oct. 27.
“America First Legal,” Miller’s organization founded as an ideological counter to the American Civil Liberties Union, was listed as an advisory group to Project 2025 until Miller asked that the name be removed because of negative attention.
Homan, a Project 2025 named contributor, was an acting US Immigration and Customs Enforcement director during Trump’s first presidency, playing a key role in what became known as Trump’s “family separation policy.”
Previewing Trump 2.0 earlier this year, Homan said: “No one’s off the table. If you’re here illegally, you better be looking over your shoulder.”
Project 2025 contributors slated for CIA and Federal Communications chiefs
John Ratcliffe, Trump’s pick to lead the CIA, was previously one of Trump’s directors of national intelligence. He is a Project 2025 contributor. The document’s chapter on US intelligence was written by Dustin Carmack, Ratcliffe’s chief of staff in the first Trump administration.
Reflecting Ratcliffe’s and Trump’s approach, Carmack declared the intelligence establishment too cautious. Ratcliffe, like the chapter attributed to Carmack, is hawkish toward China. Throughout the Project 2025 document, Beijing is framed as a US adversary that cannot be trusted.
Brendan Carr, the senior Republican on the Federal Communications Commission, wrote Project 2025’s FCC chapter and is now Trump’s pick to chair the panel. Carr wrote that the FCC chairman “is empowered with significant authority that is not shared” with other FCC members. He called for the FCC to address “threats to individual liberty posed by corporations that are abusing dominant positions in the market,” specifically “Big Tech and its attempts to drive diverse political viewpoints from the digital town square.”
He called for more stringent transparency rules for social media platforms like Facebook and YouTube and “empower consumers to choose their own content filters and fact checkers, if any.”
Carr and Ratcliffe would require Senate confirmation for their posts.
