BANGKOK, Thailand, Feb 6, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - Ousted Myanmar democracy 
figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi is in "strong spirits", her son told AFP Tuesday 
after receiving a letter from her -- their first communication since she was 
detained in a coup three years ago.

Suu Kyi was detained on the morning of the February 2021 coup that ended a 
10-year experiment with democracy and plunged the Southeast Asian nation into 
bloody turmoil.

The Nobel laureate, 78, has since been jailed for more than 20 years by a 
junta court following what rights groups say was a sham trial designed to 
remove her from politics.

"She is in strong spirits as always," Kim Aris said of the letter he received 
from his mother thanking him for a care package he had sent to her late last 
year.

The letter received in early January was "the first real indication I've 
had... that she's actually alive", he told AFP by phone from London.

"She was sending her love to all the family."

Suu Kyi, who remains hugely popular in Myanmar, has been largely hidden from 
view since the coup, appearing only in grainy state media photos taken during 
court proceedings.

Local media reported during her months-long trial that Suu Kyi had suffered 
dizzy spells, vomiting and at times had been unable to eat because of a tooth 
infection.

Her National League for Democracy (NLD) party accused the junta last 
September of endangering her life by denying her medical care.

Suu Kyi was continuing to suffer from dental problems, Aris told AFP, adding 
he had sent medicine and foods rich in vitamins in the care package.

He said she was still being held at a specially constructed compound in the 
military-built capital Naypyidaw.

The compound had no air conditioning in the searing heat and the concrete 
cells leaked during the monsoon, Australian economist Sean Turnell, who was 
detained there for months, told AFP last year.

Turnell, an economic adviser to Suu Kyi's government, was a co-defendant at 
one of her trials and later jailed before being pardoned and deported.

"She was incredibly strong throughout" their trial, he said.

"She was, I think more concerned to keep the spirits up of the people, like 
me, charged alongside her, than she was about her own situation."

- Isolated -

Confinement in the isolated capital is a far cry from the years Suu Kyi spent 
under house arrest during a previous junta, where she became a world-famous 
democracy figurehead.

During that period, she lived at her family's colonial-era lakeside mansion 
in the commercial hub Yangon and regularly gave speeches to crowds on the 
other side of her garden wall.

Local media have reported that the house -- the subject of a dispute between 
Suu Kyi and her brother -- will be put up for auction in the coming weeks.

The NLD has been decimated in the junta's bloody crackdown on dissent, with 
one former lawmaker executed in Myanmar's first use of capital punishment in 
decades.

The junta dissolved the party in March last year for failing to re-register 
under a tough new military-drafted electoral law, removing it from polls it 
has indicated it may hold in 2025.

Myanmar has been in turmoil since the coup. A military crackdown on dissent 
has killed more than 4,400 people and seen more than 25,000 arrested, 
according to a local monitoring group.