Pope offers asylum to Suu Kyi imprisoned in Myanmar

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Pope Francis has offered to welcome detained former Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi to Vatican territory, Italian media reported Tuesday.

“I asked for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and met her son in Rome. I proposed to the Vatican to welcome him on our territory,” the pope said, according to a report of his meetings with Jesuits in Asia during his trip to the country earlier this month.

The daily newspaper Corriere della Sera published an article by the Italian priest Antonio Spadaro giving excerpts from these private meetings, which took place in Indonesia, East Timor and Singapore between September 2 and 13.

“We cannot remain silent on the current situation in Myanmar. We must do something,” the Pope reportedly said.

“The future of your country must be a future of peace based on respect for the dignity and rights of each person and on respect for a democratic system that allows everyone to contribute to the common good.”

Aung San Suu Kyi, 78, is serving a 27-year prison sentence on charges ranging from corruption to flouting Covid-19 pandemic restrictions.

In 2015, his National League for Democracy won Myanmar’s first democratic elections in 25 years.

She was arrested by the military during the 2021 coup and is reportedly suffering from health problems in detention, according to local media.

The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner was once hailed as a role model for human rights.

But she fell out of favour with her international supporters in 2017, accused of doing nothing to stop the military from persecuting the mostly Muslim Rohingya minority.

The crackdown is the subject of an ongoing United Nations genocide investigation, and persecution continues, according to Rohingya refugees in neighboring Bangladesh.

Buddhist-majority Myanmar has been gripped by unrest since a 2021 coup, with the junta battling both established ethnic rebel groups and new pro-democracy forces.

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