Ousted Myanmar leader Suu Kyi jailed for total of 33 years

Ousted Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced to another seven years in jail as her long series of trials ended, with the Nobel laureate now facing more than three decades behind bars.

A prisoner of the military since a coup last year, Suu Kyi, 77, has been convicted on every charge levelled against her ranging from corruption to illegally possessing walkie-talkies and flouting Covid restrictions.

She was jailed for seven years on five counts of corruption related to the hiring, maintaining and purchase of a helicopter for a government minister, a case in which she allegedly caused "a loss to the state".

Suu Kyi-sentenced to a total of 33 years following 18 months of court proceedings that rights groups have dismissed as a shamappeared in good health, a legal source familiar with the case told AFP.

"All her cases were finished and there are no more charges against her," said the source, who requested anonymity as they were not authorized to speak to the media.

Exhausted by "surviving instead of living" in Cuba, David Gonzalez set his sights on a new life in the United States.

In early 2022, he joined thousands of Cubans whose migration has amounted to the largest exodus in the Caribbean nation's history. Gonzalez, a 34-year-old barber, said he could no longer bear the hardships of a country going through its worst economic crisis since the 1990s, or the communist regime he had never embraced.

In Cuba, "you lose hope," he told AFP from Miami, Florida, which he reached after a weeks-long odyssey across multiple countries.

That hopelessness, shared by many young people in Cuba, has pushed emigration to the United States to the highest levels on record.

In the year from December 2021 to 2022, border authorities recorded more than 227,000 instances of Cubans illegally entering US territory.