Myanmar officially ended pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi’s six-year house arrest yesterday — but she remains in jail facing charges over an incident in which a US man swam to her lakeside house, her party said.
Nyan Win, a spokesman for the National League for Democracy (NLD), said a senior policeman gave Aung San Suu Kyi papers notifying her that the restriction orders keeping her at her lakeside home had been lifted.
But he said her supporters “don’t know whether we should be happy or sad” since she was being held at Yangon’s notorious Insein prison facing a five-year jail term on charges of breaching the terms of her house arrest.
“Police Brigadier-General Myint Thein came to the prison and read out an order canceling the continued restriction order, released and dated today. They gave one copy to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” Nyan Win told reporters.
“It means that she is free from detention” under the relevant section of Myanmar’s draconian Law Safeguarding the State from the Dangers of Subversive Elements, he said.
Her lawyers had argued that her six years under house arrest were due to expire today, and pointed to a UN panel’s ruling that her house arrest was already illegal under both Myanmar and international law.
Myint Thein, the police official, had told reporters and diplomats just hours before the order was lifted that the military regime had the legal right to keep Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for another six months.
“We don’t know whether we should be happy or sad, because she is still in detention on these charges. I cannot guess the verdict but according to the law she should be completely free,” Nyan Win said.
Aung San Suu Kyi said at her trial yesterday that she had not violated the terms of her house arrest by offering “temporary shelter” to the man who swam to her home.
She said the first she knew of the bizarre visit by US army veteran John Yettaw was when her assistant woke her up at around dawn on May 4 to tell her that a man had arrived at the house.
The junta is also trying Yettaw and two female aides who live with Aung San Suu Kyi in her house. Yettaw has said he swam to her house to warn her of a vision he had that she would be assassinated.
Asian and European foreign ministers meeting in Hanoi yesterday issued a joint statement urging Myanmar to release its prisoners but failing to directly condemn her trial.
“In light of the concern about the recent developments relating to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, ministers ... called for the early release of those under detention and the lifting of restrictions placed on political parties,” it said.
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