Ousted Myanmar leader Suu Kyi's solitary confinement: what we know | The Guardian Nigeria News - Nigeria and World News

One of the Myanmar military’s first moves during its coup last year was to place Aung San Suu Kyi, the country’s de facto civilian leader and a democracy figurehead who has spent decades battling military rule, under house arrest.

After more than a year of house arrest at an undisclosed location in Naypyidaw, Suu Kyi was on Wednesday moved amid high security to a prison compound on the western side of the sprawling military-built capital.

Suu Kyi will no longer be attended to by the ten or so domestic staff who accompanied her during her house arrest.

Her new conditions are a far cry from the years she spent under house arrest during the previous junta, when she lived at her family’s colonial-era lakeside mansion in Yangon and regularly gave speeches to crowds on the other side of her garden wall.

Up until now Suu Kyi — the daughter of independence hero Aung San — had largely been spared the time inside prison given to thousands of other democracy activists during decades of military rule.

“It’s hard to explain their reasoning for this decision after more than a year” of house arrest, a former lawmaker from Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party, who did not want to be named, told AFP.

Suu Kyi spent around 15 years under house arrest under previous juntas, leading a simple life dominated by reading, meditation and prayer