Myanmar’s military regime unexpectedly opened pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial to reporters yesterday and allowed diplomats to meet her — rare concessions in the face of worldwide outrage over the handling of her case.
The Nobel Peace laureate, who has been in detention without trial for more than 13 of the past 19 years, is accused of violating the terms of her house arrest after an American man stayed at her home without official permission.
The offense is punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment.
PHOTO: REUTERS
She is standing trial with two female members of her party who live with her, and John Yettaw, the American who swam to her lakeside home earlier this month and sneaked in uninvited.
The trial adjourned yesterday after two more police officers testified for the prosecution, including one who interviewed Aung San Suu Kyi after her arrest. He said Aung San Suu Kyi told him that she provided Yettaw with rehydration salts and several meals.
A township police officer also presented 23 items of evidence, including two black cloaks that resembled abaya typically found in Saudi Arabia, which Yettaw allegedly left behind for Aung San Suu Kyi. Two women modeled the all-black garb in the courtroom.
The 63-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi looked healthy as she thanked foreign envoys for coming to the Insein Prison in her first public comments since she was charged last week, a reporter inside the court said.
“Thank you very much for coming and for your support,” she said inside the courtroom at the end of the third day of the trial.
“I can’t meet you one by one, but I hope to meet you all in better days,” she said.
She then went for a meeting with the ambassadors of Thailand, Singapore and Russia at a so-called “guest house” inside the prison.
Aung San Suu Kyi had been scheduled to be freed next Wednesday after six years under house arrest. The charges against her are widely seen as a pretext for her to stay in detention during polls scheduled for next year — the culmination of the junta’s “roadmap to democracy,” which has been criticized as a fig leaf for continued military rule.
The court on Monday rejected a request by Aung San Suu Kyi’s lawyer for an open trial.
But yesterday the Information Ministry ruled that five foreign correspondents and five local reporters could attend the trial’s afternoon session.
Authorities also said all embassies could send one diplomat.
A US consular official had been allowed to attend the court sessions because Yettaw is standing trial, but the proceedings were otherwise closed to the press and public.
The move comes a day after ASEAN expressed “grave concern” about developments related to Aung San Suu Kyi and reaffirmed calls for her immediate release. It also called for her to get adequate medical care and be treated with dignity.
Asked to explain the regime’s apparent change of heart, a Western diplomat said that following international pressure on the ruling generals, particularly by ASEAN, “one has to ask if all these pressures played a role.”
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Tuesday declared martial law in an unannounced late night address broadcast live on YTN television. Yoon said he had no choice but to resort to such a measure in order to safeguard free and constitutional order, saying opposition parties have taken hostage of the parliamentary process to throw the country into a crisis. "I declare martial law to protect the free Republic of Korea from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘ANCIENT AND MODERN’: The project, which took 22 years to complete, unearthed more than 300,000 treasures now on display across the network It caused untold commotion, decades of disruption and — among historians and archeologists — controversy and despair, but at midday on Saturday, the antiquities-rich subterranean world of Thessaloniki opened to a world of driverless trains and high-tech automation with the inauguration of its long-awaited subway. The excitement on the streets of the northern Greek port city is almost palpable. “Archaeologically, it has been an extremely complex and difficult endeavor,” said Greek Minister of Culture, Education and Religious Affairs Lina Mendoni of the more than 300,000 finds made since construction began 22 years ago. “To get here required a battle on many
‘AMERICA FIRST’: Patel, 44, previously called for stripping the FBI of its intelligence-gathering role and purging its ranks of anyone who refuses to support Trump’s agenda US president-elect Donald Trump has tapped Kash Patel to be FBI director, nominating a loyalist to lead the chief US law enforcement agency — which Trump has long derided as corrupt. Patel rose to prominence expressing outrage over the agency’s investigation into whether Trump’s campaign conspired with Russia to interfere in the 2016 presidential election. With the nomination of Patel, Trump is signaling that he is preparing to carry out his threat to oust FBI Director Christopher Wray, a Republican first appointed by Trump during his first term as president, whose 10-year term at the FBI does not expire until 2027. FBI
RSS