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.