Myanmar's military-backed government released rare photographs of the country's imprisoned former leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
According to NBC News, the government said Monday, October 19, that it had delivered two books sent by King Charles III to detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi, along with a sealed envelope and diplomatic correspondence.
President Min Aung Hlaing, who seized power in February 2021 as an army chief, has been seeking to end Myanmar’s international isolation, imposed after Suu Kyi was ousted and imprisoned.
Min Aung Hlaing has faced sanctions but is now trying to project a return to normalcy after holding an election in 2025 and increasing Myanmar’s engagement with its regional neighbors.
The Presidential Press and Information Bureau said in a statement released on its Telegram channel that two officials from the Home Affairs ministry delivered the materials to Suu Kyi in the capital, Naypyitaw, that morning.
The books were identified as The Land Gardeners: Soil to Table, by British authors Bridget Elworthy and Henrietta Courtauld, which explores the relationship between healthy soil and food, and Soil: The World at Our Feet, the catalog from an environmental exhibition in London.
Charles, who has long championed environmental protection and sustainable agriculture, met Suu Kyi in London in 2017, when he was Prince of Wales and she was Myanmar’s state counselor.
Suu Kyi, who has served several sentences in prison and under house arrest, has spoken about the influence of literature on her life during her previous periods of detention, and is known to enjoy fiction and detective books.
