Five years after she was removed from office in a military coup, Myanmar’s former, democratically-elected leader Aung San Suu Kyi remains in detention with no contact with her family. There was a sign of life this week.Myanmar regime’s diplomatic offensiveWhen Myanmar’s former leader Aung San Suu Kyi met a Red Cross representative on Monday, it was her first known meeting with a foreign official since she was removed from office in a coup five years ago. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) confirmed that its representative in Myanmar had been able to speak with the Nobel peace laureate in private but gave no further details.“In line with the ICRC’s working methods, detention visits provide people deprived of liberty with the opportunity to exchange news with their families. As is customary in the ICRC’s detention work, observations and recommendations related to the visit are shared exclusively and confidentially with the detaining authorities,” the committee said.In pictures published after the meeting, the 81-year-old Suu Kyi appeared to be in good health and her son Kim Aris welcomed the meeting as the first positive development concerning her since the start of her detention. He said that political pressure from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) and other governments had helped to keep his mother’s plight in the international spotlight.“I hope this leads to further humanitarian progress, including direct contact with my mother, access for our family, credible and independently verified information about her wellbeing and ultimately her immediate and unconditional release, together with all political prisoners,” he said.Suu Kyi was about to be sworn in for a second term as Myanmar’s de facto head of government following a landslide election victory when the military seized power in February 2021. She was arrested, charged with an array of offences including corruption, election fraud and breaching the official secrets act, convicted on 19 charges and sentenced to 27 years in prison.A heroine in the West while she was under house arrest for 15 years from 1989, Suu Kyi saw her international reputation crumble after she took office in 2016. When Myanmar’s military drove 700,000 members of the Rohingya minority into Bangladesh and a UN mission said senior figures should be charged with genocide, Suu Kyi defended their actions.She led her country’s defence before the International Court of Justice in The Hague, arguing it was an internal armed conflict and that any illegal acts could be handled domestically. The controversy saw her lose many of the honours conferred on her in earlier years, including the freedom of the city of Dublin.Suu Kyi’s defenders claimed that defying the military over the Rohingya issue risked triggering a coup, but defending the commanders did not prevent her overthrow or the bloody civil war that has followed it. Min Aung Hliang, the general who led the coup and took power at the head of a military junta in 2021, this year became Myanmar’s president after an election that was neither free nor fair.Since then, he has been engaged in a diplomatic offensive, visiting his country’s most powerful neighbours in China and India and trying to persuade Asean to lift the suspension of Myanmar’s membership rights imposed after the coup. Suu Kyi’s move earlier this year from prison to house arrest, along with the release of other political prisoners, coincided with this charm campaign.Suu Kyi’s meeting with the Red Cross representative this week came in advance of Min Aung Hliang’s visit to Thailand tomorrow and the Thai foreign minister, Sihasak Phuangketkeow, said the authorities in Myanmar seemed to be listening to Asean’s representations about her.“It’s their way of responding to our concerns,” he said.It is about the only way they are doing so and in a speech to parliament last week, Min Aung Hliang rejected as discriminatory Asean’s five-point consensus for Myanmar which includes demands for an end to violence, constructive dialogue among all parties and the appointment of a special envoy to mediate between the government and rebel groups.“The government noted that although some Asean member states had, over the past five years, adopted positions and practices that it regarded as discriminatory towards Myanmar, Myanmar had exercised patience and continued to co-operate in accordance with its responsibilities as an Asean member state,” he said.Please let me know what you think and send me your comments, thoughts or suggestions for topics you would like to see covered to denis.globalbriefing@irishtimes.com