Myanmar’s police chief yesterday denied detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was on hunger strike after her party said she has been refusing food for three weeks.
Khin Yee told reporters a lawyer and doctor had visited the Nobel peace laureate, who has spent most of the past 19 years under house arrest.
“We allowed lawyer U Kyi Win to visit Daw Suu Kyi three times as she requested, as well as her doctor Tin Myo Win for her medical check-up,” the police chief told a press conference.
“According to their report back to us, we haven’t heard anything about Daw Su Kyi being on hunger strike in her house,” he said.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League of Democracy party reported on Friday that she had been refusing food supplies for the past three weeks but stopped short of claiming she was on hunger strike.
The 63-year-old is allowed little contact with the outside world, but in recent weeks has refused even the rare meetings that the junta has offered her, declining to meet its liaison officer this week.
She also refused to meet visiting UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari last month, fueling speculation about her motives, with analysts saying she was trying to express her frustration with the slow pace of the regime’s “dialogue” with her.
The police chief was joined by ministers from the ruling junta for the press conference held in the remote and newly built capital Naypyidaw.
Auschwitz survivor Eva Schloss, the stepsister of teenage diarist Anne Frank and a tireless educator about the horrors of the Holocaust, has died. She was 96. The Anne Frank Trust UK, of which Schloss was honorary president, said she died on Saturday in London, where she lived. Britain’s King Charles III said he was “privileged and proud” to have known Schloss, who cofounded the charitable trust to help young people challenge prejudice. “The horrors that she endured as a young woman are impossible to comprehend and yet she devoted the rest of her life to overcoming hatred and prejudice, promoting kindness, courage, understanding
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
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