Cambodia’s former prime minister urges Myanmar junta chief to allow video calls with Suu Kyi | 104.1 WIKY

PHNOM PENH (Reuters) – Cambodia’s former Prime Minister Hun Sen asked Myanmar’s ruling general on Tuesday to allow him to speak to detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi via video call, a request he said was made by the junta chief would be taken into consideration.

Suu Kyi, the figurehead of Myanmar’s fight against military rule, was arrested in a 2021 coup and has since been sentenced to 27 years in prison for a host of crimes she says her allies did not commit.

Hun Sen, who resigned last year to make way for his son after nearly 40 years in charge of Cambodia, spoke via video call on Tuesday with Min Aung Hlaing, the general who led the coup against Suu Kyi’s elected government.

In a post on his Facebook page showing a photo of the two speaking on video, Hun Sen said Min Aung Hlaing agreed to give the request “high consideration.” Cambodia would send a special envoy to Myanmar, Hun Sen added.

Hun Sen, now chairman of the Cambodian Senate, has no official mediating role in Myanmar’s post-coup conflict and it was not immediately clear why he had sought access to Suu Kyi.

Myanmar’s military government was not immediately available for comment.

It is not clear where Suu Kyi is being held and her family and lawyers say they do not have access to her. The military claims she received a fair trial.

Myanmar is embroiled in a civil war between the military on one side and a loose alliance of entrenched ethnic minority rebels on the other and an armed resistance movement that grew out of the junta’s bloody crackdown on anti-coup protests.

The conflict is the biggest challenge the military has faced since it first took power in the former British colony in 1962, with fighting on several fronts to quell uprisings and stabilize an economy that has withered since the coup.

The junta and its emboldened resistance face a critical period in the conflict, as rain-laden monsoon clouds will begin to roll over Myanmar around early June and engulf the front lines.

(Reporting by Reuters Staff; Writing by Martin Petty; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)