Calls for Suu Kyi's freedom mount after junta orders house arrest
Calls for Suu Kyi's freedom mount after junta orders house arrest
Agence France-Presse Yangon
Myanmar democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi remained under house arrest Sunday amid mounting calls for her release and hopes that a visiting United Nations envoy could help secure her freedom.
Security surrounding her famous University Drive villa was tight, with traffic police and military intelligence officials maintaining a 24-hour guard and barring visitors including a group of Western diplomats.
The 58-year-old opposition leader was taken to her home last Friday after nearly four months of detention in a secret location which ended when she was admitted to a private hospital in Yangon for major gynaecological surgery.
She had been held incommunicado since May 30 when she was arrested after violent clashes between her supporters and a pro- junta mob which ambushed her convoy during a political tour of northern Myanmar.
The military government had been under intense international pressure to release Suu Kyi, and the decision to put her under house arrest was greeted with relief but continuing calls for her to be freed unconditionally.
Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnoputri, who will host a summit of Southeast Asian leaders in Bali next month, reportedly urged the junta to make its plans for the opposition leader clear before the meeting.
"The Myanmar government should state specifically whether it will keep Suu Kyi under house arrest or free her immediately. The road map over whether it will free Suu Kyi should be made clear," she told The Jakarta Post on Sunday.
Otherwise the issue could cast a shadow over the summit, said Megawati, who sent former foreign minister Ali Alatas to Yangon last week to persuade the military rulers to release the Nobel peace laureate.
The United States, which tightened sanctions against the military regime as punishment for Suu Kyi's latest detention and a wider crackdown on her National League for Democracy (NLD), has also called for more action.
"We remain concerned about her situation as well as those of other political prisoners currently under detention," the U.S. State Department said late last Friday.
"We reiterate our calls for the junta to immediately lift all restrictions on her and to release all other political prisoners," said deputy spokesman Adam Ereli.
However, analysts in Yangon said they were hopeful that the national reconciliation process could proceed despite the new restrictions on Suu Kyi, who has spent more than seven years under house arrest since 1988.
A leading U.S. senator, Richard Lugar, warned in an opinion piece published in Washington on Sunday that Myanmar's insular military regime is sowing seeds of instability in south and southeast Asia.
Until now Myanmar's junta "has primarily victimized the long- suffering Burmese people," the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote in The Washington Post.
But now "Burma's generals are quietly moving in new directions that could make that dismal country a source of instability throughout South and Southeast Asia," he argued.
"The United States needs to make Burma a priority in its relations with Russia, China, India and ASEAN so that we can forge a multilateral plan to turn the generals from their dangerous course," Lugar said.
Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, is building a nuclear reactor with help from Russia, and may be getting missiles from North Korea.