Kim wants to know if his mum is alive. It’s not easy for the son of Suu Kyi

The pro-democracy icon has been detained by a secretive, brutal junta that has waged war against its own citizens since February 2021. Her younger son is demanding answers.

Kim Aris simply wants to know whether his mum is dead or alive. It should be an easy question to answer, but not so for the younger son of Aung San Suu Kyi.

“Right now I’m trying to establish whether or not my mother is actually alive or not,” he said.

The pro-democracy icon has been detained since February 2021, when she was ousted as Myanmar’s civilian leader, and her fate has been in the hands of a secretive, brutal junta that has waged war against its own citizens.

Aris last spoke with his mother a few days before Senior General Min Aung Hlaing seized power, on the eve of what should have been Suu Kyi’s second term in office as the de facto head of the National League for Democracy’s government.

“She did warn me something was around the corner, she wasn’t quite sure what, but I certainly had an inkling something was on its way,” Aris said of their last conversation.

While he ultimately wants to see her free to continue her lifelong mission, the 48-year-old is visiting Australia for a campaign called Proof of Life. Aris has had very little credible information about Suu Kyi’s welfare or whereabouts for five years.

He does not trust information from military spokespeople or prison personnel, and “it’s only when certain different sources correlate with one another that my ears prick up”.

“The only things that we’ve already heard of substance is that her health has been deteriorating, and that includes problems with her teeth and gums, as well as heart problems and other age-related problems,” Aris said.

“So this is my main concern, is that Min Aung Hlaing will be letting her rot in jail, basically, and it doesn’t matter to him whether or not she’s in a great deal of pain or suffering.

“At least when she was under house arrest, I knew where she was. I knew that she had her own personal doctor who was able to attend to her, and we were actually able to communicate at times at that time, but now there’s been nothing except for the one letter I’ve had, which is over two years ago now.”

Aris has fond memories of house arrest. When he was about 11 or 12, he had his mother “all to myself, and we could do normal things”. They read books and cooked together.

Aris has spent most of his life in England; his father, Michael, was a historian who died in 1999; his older brother Alexander accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on his mother’s behalf in 1991. The two sons were stripped of their