Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi marked her 61st birthday under house arrest yesterday, while pro-democracy activists at home and around the world staged protests against the military junta.
Some 300 supporters began a day of ceremonies and protests near her crumbling Yangon house, where the Nobel peace prize laureate has spent 10 of the past 17 years behind barbed wire and isolated from the outside world.
Members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) offered Buddhist prayers and released doves and balloons at their nearby party headquarters as 20 plainclothes security personnel kept a close eye on activities.
NLD supporters, clad in the party's orange uniforms and T-shirts bearing the picture of the pro-democracy leader, chanted "Free Suu Kyi!"
"We wish her good health," said Lai Lai, a senior member of the NLD, the opposition party which won 1990 elections that were annulled by the junta, and whose members have been targeted with harassment and arrest.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the foreign-educated daughter of national independence hero General Aung San, underwent a hysterectomy in 2003 and was treated last week for stomach troubles, her physician said.
Five Buddhist monks prayed for Aung San Suu Kyi's health and her immediate release from house arrest, which was extended by the internationally isolated junta for another year last month.
Rallies were to be held in more than 25 countries across Asia, Europe and North America to demand the freedom of the Nobel Peace Laureate.
In Bangkok monks and supporters held a birthday ceremony outside the Myanmar embassy, following similar events with hundreds of people in Kuala Lumpur and New Delhi at the weekend.
In the US, which is home to Myanmar's largest exile community, the Washington-based US Campaign for Burma organized events in more than 270 towns and cities over the weekend to demand her freedom.
The National Council of the Union of Burma, a Bangkok-based exile group, condemned the regime, which calls itself the State Peace and Development Council, and accused it of "brutality and mismanagement."
It demanded the junta led by General Than Shwe "immediately release Aung San Suu Kyi, all jailed members of National League for Democracy, women political activists and democracy loving people."
The regime had shown its "sheer disinterest in a peaceful and negotiated political solution to the festering crises facing Burma today," it said.
"All around the world today protests, gatherings, and rallies are being held to support her, and the cause of the restoration of democracy in Burma, which she so proudly champions," the group said.
South African Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu and former Czech prisoner of conscience-turned-president Vaclav Havel said "we are aware that Burma is not today's only hot issue".
"But inconsistent international positions lead to a growth in the ambition of other dictatorial or semi-dictatorial regimes, and with it a sense of impunity," they said in a statement.
Aung San Suu Kyi studied and worked abroad including for the UN, but returned to Myanmar in 1988 to care for her ailing mother.
Mass pro-democracy rallies broke out that same year, but were quashed by the military. Aung San Suu Kyi co-founded the NLD and was put under house arrest in 1989. She refused an offer of freedom if she left the country for good.
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