Myanmar’s detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is making a final bid for freedom, lawyers said yesterday after submitting a request for a special appeal against her house arrest.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has already lost two appeals against a conviction in August last year, most recently at the country’s High Court in February. Her last legal option is the Special Appellate Bench, a multi-judge panel in the remote administrative capital of Naypyitaw.
Lawyers filed their appeal Monday at the High Court, which will decide whether to forward the case to the special court for consideration, attorney Nyan Win said.
The 64-year-old Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for 14 of the past 20 years. In August, she was convicted of violating the terms of her house arrest for briefly sheltering an American who swam uninvited to her home, and she was ordered to serve three years in prison with hard labor. The trial drew global condemnation.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s sentence was commuted to 18 months of extended house arrest, which would keep her detained through elections planned for later this year. An initial appeal was rejected in October and upheld by the High Court in February.
Her National League for Democracy Party, which won the country’s last election in 1990 but was not allowed to take power, was disbanded last week after refusing to register for the upcoming polls.
The party has denounced new election laws as undemocratic and declined to register as required, which meant it was automatically dissolved.
US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia Kurt Campbell met with Aung San Suu Kyi for nearly two hours on Monday at the end of a two-day visit to Myanmar.
He did not reveal details of their talks, but praised her nonviolent struggle for democracy.
“She has demonstrated compassion and tolerance for her captors in the face of repeated indignities,” he told reporters. “It is simply tragic that Burma’s [Myanmar’s] generals have rebuffed her countless appeals to work together to find a peaceable solution for a more prosperous future.”
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