Courtesy of Yale MacMillan Center

On March 19, Kim Aris, the youngest son of 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi visited Yale to shed light on Myanmar’s ongoing crisis and advocate for his mother’s freedom.

Speaking passionately to faculty members and students of the Council of Southeast Asia Studies, he recounted the heartbreaking reality of his mother’s isolation and the suffering of the Burmese people under military rule.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who was deposed in a 2021 coup, is still widely revered in Myanmar and is serving a 33-year sentence on corruption and other charges. She was jailed after the conclusion of several closed-door, military-run trials. Human rights groups and supporters say the charges were enacted to keep the Nobel Peace laureate from assuming elected office. Since the coup, Myanmar has spiraled into a civil war, which has killed thousands of people.

“For four years, I have received only one letter from my mother. For four years, she has been kept in complete isolation, her voice silenced, her fate unknown. I do not know where she is, whether she is safe or if she is receiving the medical care she needs,” Aris shared with a solemn audience.

During a meeting with Yale faculty and Southeast Asian Studies scholars, Aris reflected on his mother’s lifelong commitment to democracy, recalling how she stood with students during the 1988 uprising. Now, at 80 years old, she remains in solitary confinement, cut off from the world.

He said that his mother has not been able to receive treatment from her physician, and he fears the conditions of the prison she is in, stating that “prison doctors [are] notoriously bad” and that people die in prison in Myanmar daily. 

Aris also emphasized that his mother’s plight is emblematic of Myanmar’s suffering, her isolation mirroring “the suffering of Burma itself.”

“Since the 2021 coup, Burma has become one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, with over 6,000 civilians killed, 22,000 people imprisoned — including students, journalists and activists,” said Aris.

The discussion then briefly pivoted to Aung San Suu Kyi’s alleged lack of acknowledgment of the 2017 Rohingya crisis in Myanmar.

While serving as State Counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi drew criticism over Myanmar’s inaction in response to the Rohingya genocide and her refusal to acknowledge that the military had committed massacres. In 2019, she appeared in the International Court of Justice where she defended the Myanmar military against allegations of genocide against the Rohingya people.

“It’s very hard to get any focus on what’s happening in Burma, at least when my mother was idolized all over the world, we could get some focus, but since the Rohingya crisis and the way people portrayed her over that, it’s much harder to get that same level of support that we had,” Aris said.

He highlighted that part of his mission is “trying to teach people exactly what she was doing to try and rectify that situation.” He stated that his mother was working on solving the crisis “long before it became so prominent in the media.”

After seeing how the media “turned” on his mother, Aris said that he has become careful with journalists and using media as part of his efforts, though he now views them as needed avenues for advancing his efforts. He believes that the media’s attacks on his mother were misled by the military as “the military are very good at spreading rumors and creating division.”

As part of his U.S. tour, Aris has also given talks at Harvard and Cornell to raise awareness on the urgent need for access to his mother and concerns over her health, as well as the worsening humanitarian crisis in Myanmar. 

He remarked that he came to Yale “not as an academic or politician, but as an ordinary person with a moral compass” advocating for the release of his mother and other political leaders in Myanmar.

Yale Professor David Moe, who teaches a class on “Politics of Religious Nationalism and Decentralized Resistance in Southeast Asia,” remarked that “given that Myanmar’s spring revolution had emerged from the bottom-up amongst ordinary people across the nation’s villages and valleys,” Aris’ advocacy work “resonates with [him] and inspires many of us.” 

Aris’ visit comes 13 years after his mother met with former University President Richard Levin in a forum hosted by the Chubb Fellowship. The 2012 visit to Yale was part of her first U.S. tour since leaving house arrest. During her visit, she lectured about the rule of law and Burma’s road to democracy to a sold-out Sprague Hall crowd.

Ben Kiernan, a historian of Southeast Asian history and former chair of the Council on Southeast Asian Studies at Yale, remarked on how “moving” it was to host Aris at Yale.

“She was able to stand before one of the largest auditoriums we have on campus, and speak with no notes, and tell a story that captivated the audience like everyone was sitting in a room, like a small cafe,” said Kiernan. “The intimacy that she was able to fill with that entire room was really quite remarkable.”

Following the meeting with Yale faculty and scholars, professor Erik Harms, Chair of the Council on Southeast Asian Studies, Kiernan and Moe led Aris on a tour of Yale’s campus, including Sprague Hall.

At Sprague Hall, Christopher Melillo, an operations coordinator for the School of Music, recalled fondly about helping fix the mic during Aung San Suu Kyi’s visit over 13 years ago.

“She was fidgeting around with her scarf, and every time she’d pull it down, it would hit the podium, so when she was finished, I ran to her right away and I adjusted the microphone,” said Melillo.

Melillo remarked that he would not have known that Aung San Suu Kyi was currently imprisoned if not for Aris’ visit to Yale. He recalled how “you could feel her presence.”

Aung San Suu Kyi served as the 2012-13 Yale Chubb Fellow.