The fate of detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi has become a growing concern, with her son Kim Aris saying he fears she may no longer be alive after years without direct contact.

Aris, a British national, told Reuters that he has not heard from his 80-year-old mother since shortly after Myanmar’s military seized power in a coup in February 2021. Since then, he has received only sporadic, second-hand information about her deteriorating health, including heart, bone and gum problems.

“Nobody has seen her in over two years. She hasn’t been allowed contact with her legal team, never mind her family,” Aris said during an interview in Tokyo. “For all I know, she could be dead already.”

Myanmar’s military government has announced plans to hold elections later this month, a move widely dismissed by the international community as an attempt to legitimise continued military rule. Aris also described the planned vote as a “sham”.

He suggested that junta chief Min Aung Hlaing could seek to use Suu Kyi politically around the election period. “If he does want to use her to try to appease the general population before or after the elections by either releasing her or moving her to house arrest, then at least that would be something,” Aris said.

Myanmar’s military has previously released high-profile detainees to coincide with national holidays or political milestones. Suu Kyi herself was freed in 2010, days after a general election, following years of house arrest at her family home beside Yangon’s Inya Lake.

Suu Kyi later led the country after her National League for Democracy won a landslide victory in the 2015 elections, the first broadly contested polls in a quarter of a century. However, her international standing was severely damaged by accusations that her government failed to prevent atrocities against the Rohingya Muslim minority in Rakhine State.

She is currently serving a combined 27-year prison sentence after being convicted of multiple charges, including incitement, corruption and election fraud. Suu Kyi has denied all allegations, which rights groups say were politically motivated.

Aris believes his mother is being held in Naypyitaw. In the last letter he received from her, about two years ago, she complained of extreme heat and cold inside her detention facility during different seasons.

He expressed concern that Myanmar’s crisis is being overshadowed by conflicts elsewhere in the world. “People are forgetting about Myanmar,” he said, adding that Suu Kyi’s diminished international reputation since the Rohingya crisis has made it easier for governments to look away.

During a recent visit to Japan, Aris said he met politicians and government officials to urge them to take a tougher stance against Myanmar’s military rulers and to reject the planned elections.

He said the upcoming polls had created a brief opportunity to refocus international attention on his mother’s condition and on the broader political crisis in Myanmar.