Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is no longer under security detention, but will not accept freedom until all those arrested with her five months ago are released, a UN human-rights envoy said yesterday.
"She wants to be the last person to have access to freedom of movement," the envoy, Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, told reporters.
Pinheiro met with Suu Kyi at her lakeside home Thursday during his weeklong mission to investigate human rights in the military-ruled country.
The Nobel Peace laureate has been under detention since a bloody clash in northern Myanmar on May 30 between her supporters and a pro-junta mob. She was first held at an undisclosed location and then at her Yangon residence.
Pinheiro said 35 people remain in jail in connection with the May 30 incident and 101 have been freed. In addition there are eight central executive members of the NLD in house arrest, he said.
The UN envoy said Suu Kyi told him that "she will not accept any privilege or freedom of movement before all the people detained since May 30 including her eight colleagues [are] released."
The government said at the time of the clash that Suu Kyi was being detained under emergency security law. But Pinheiro said he was told by authorities this week that she is "not held under any security law." The government has not said this publicly.
It was not clear if that meant Suu Kyi was free to leave her home or whether she was being held under some non-security law. Pinheiro refused to clarify.
He also declined to give an account of Suu Kyi's health but said she was in good spirits.
"She wants an independent investigation of the [May 30] incident. She wants accountability and justice but not revenge," Pinheiro said.
"Sometimes tragic incidents could become the foundation for change," he said.
Pinheiro is the only person to have been allowed to meet with Suu Kyi other than UN special envoy to Myanmar, Razali Ismail, and Red Cross officials.
Her detention has provoked widespread international criticism of the junta, which has refused to give up power it seized in 1988 despite calling elections in 1990 and losing them to Suu Kyi's party.
Razali initiated reconciliation talks between Suu Kyi and the junta in October 2000 but the process ground to a halt after the May 30 incident in which dozens of opposition members are said to have been killed, according to dissident accounts. The government says only four people died.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing