Myanmar faced intense international pressure yesterday to release pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi after she was imprisoned ahead of a new trial next week for breaching the terms of her house arrest.
The ruling military junta took the Nobel Peace Prize laureate from her home on Thursday to Yangon’s notorious Insein prison, where she was charged over a bizarre incident in which an American man swam to her lakeside residence.
The US led Western calls for her immediate release while rights groups urged the UN Security Council to intervene to help the 63-year-old, whose trial is to start at the prison on Monday.
There was no comment from Myanmar’s secretive regime, which has kept Aung San Suu Kyi in detention for most of the last 19 years and now looks set to do so past controversial elections that are due next year.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was “deeply troubled” by the “baseless” case laid against Aung San Suu Kyi just days before her latest six-year detention was to have expired.
UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said he was “gravely concerned,” while the UN special envoy on human rights in Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, called for Aung San Suu Kyi to be freed, and said her detention broke the country’s laws.
Britain, France and other Western nations — which like the US have imposed sanctions on the country — condemned the decision and said it did not bode well for next year’s elections.
Indonesia became the first of Myanmar’s partners in the 10-member ASEAN to call for the junta to release her and drop the “arbitrary” new charges against her.
Myanmar authorities are currently holding Aung San Suu Kyi and her two maids, who were also charged, at a house inside the grounds of Insein Prison pending the trial, her lawyers have said.
The case centered around a mysterious US national, John Yettaw, who was arrested last week after using a pair of homemade flippers to swim across a lake to Aung San Suu Kyi’s crumbling house.
Reportedly a Mormon father of seven and a Vietnam War veteran, the heavy-set 53-year-old also faces charges of violating the restricted area around her home and breaching immigration conditions.
His motives remain unclear but Irrawaddy magazine, published by Myanmar exiles in Thailand, said he was “simply a weird character who acted alone.”
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