Updated 11:38 AM EST, Mon December 6, 2021
Myanmar's military seized power in a coup in February, detaining the country's civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other top government figures.
The coup came after months of increasing friction between the civilian government and the powerful military, known as the Tatmadaw, over alleged election irregularities.
Suu Kyi was hit with a dozen charges that add up to combined maximum sentences of more than 100 years. In December, she was sentenced to two years in jail on charges of incitement and breaking Covid-19 rules. She has rejected all the allegations against her, and her supporters say the charges against her are political.
Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, is widely considered a hero of democracy in Myanmar. After spending 15 years under house arrest as part of a decades-long fight against military rule, she led her party to a landslide victory in Myanmar's 2015 elections, establishing the country's first civilian government.
But her international reputation has been tarnished in recent years. Suu Kyi came under fire for failing to speak out against numerous atrocities allegedly carried out by the military against Rohingya Muslims. Hundreds of thousands of the persecuted ethnic minority were forced into neighboring Bangladesh during violent military operations in 2016 and 2017.
