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Suu Kyi's detention a `domestic matter'

Military-ruled Myanmar's state-run media said yesterday detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was a domestic matter and criticized Western diplomats who tried to gain access to her.

The commentary in two newspapers considered mouthpieces for the junta was the first reaction in the Myanmar media to growing international outrage over Suu Kyi's detention on May 30 after a clash between members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party and a pro-junta group.

"The matters concerning NLD [and] Suu Kyi ... are domestic affairs of Myanmar," the commentary said.

"In Western nations too, lawbreakers are arrested and actions are taken against them. Exercising its sovereign power, Myanmar is making efforts for the prevalence of peace and progress in an honest way on a self-help basis."

Diplomatic pressure on the Myanmar junta to free Suu Kyi has gradually intensified in the last month, with Japan threatening to turn off aid and the EU and the US planning harsher sanctions. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) broke with tradition to criticize one of its own, urging Myanmar to free Suu Kyi.

Myanmar's ruling generals say the Nobel peace prize winner is under "protective custody" and will be freed soon, but have not said when.

Former colonial power Britain says the junta is holding Suu Kyi in the "notorious" Insein jail on Yangon's northern outskirts, the biggest prison in the British empire before 1945.

The junta denies this. According to British diplomats, Home Minister Tin Hlaing has said Suu Kyi is being held under a law "safeguarding the state from the danger of subversive elements," the law used to keep her under house arrest twice previously for a combined seven years.

The newspaper commentary also criticized diplomats who had tried to gain access to the residences of Suu Kyi and the NLD's vice-chairman Tin Oo to check on their wellbeing.

"Some diplomats went to the residences of Daw Suu Kyi and U Tin Oo a number of times," it said. "When requested, saying they were not allowed to see them, some diplomats shoved the responsible officials aside and forced [their way] into the houses."

A member of the International Committee of the Red Cross, in central Myanmar to visit detained NLD members, said last week he had met Tin Oo and he was uninjured.

Myanmar exiles and some diplomats say hundreds of pro-junta youths, wielding bamboo and iron rods, set upon Suu Kyi's convoy and villagers when she was touring central Myanmar, killing at least 70. The junta said four died in the clash.

The military, which refused to recognize a landslide 1990 election victory by Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, has ruled the country under various guises since a 1962 coup.
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