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Suu Kyi denies charges as junta threatens to extend arrest
Agence France Presse - May 27, 2009
Rangoon – The Burmese democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, told a prison court she did not violate her house arrest during an incident in which an American man swam to her lakeside home, journalists and diplomats present said.
Ms Suu Kyi took the stand yesterday as the junta threatened to extend her house arrest even if she was not convicted.
She faces up to five more years in jail if convicted at the trial in Rangoon's notorious Insein prison, with critics accusing the military regime of trying to keep her locked up during elections due in 2010.
A top police officer said yesterday that the junta had the right to extend her house arrest by six months, rejecting claims by her lawyers that Wednesday would officially mark the end of her latest six-year period in detention.
Brigadier General Myint Thein told reporters and diplomats invited to the hearing that the junta had considered freeing her but that the situation had "regretfully" changed since the incident involving the US national John Yettaw.
He said she had officially been under house arrest for only four years and six months, "so according to the law, [authorities] can restrict her another six months to reach five years with the permission of the government".
Ms Suu Kyi has been detained for 13 of the past 19 years, since the junta prevented her National League for Democracy (NLD) party from forming a government following its landslide victory in elections in 1990, the last multi-party vote held in Burma.
An NLD spokesman, Nyan Win, who is also part of Ms Suu Kyi's defence team, said the defence would call 82-year-old Tin Oo, the detained deputy leader of the NLD, as one of its witnesses, adding that authorities had to allow him out of house arrest to testify "otherwise it will be one-sided".
The trial has provoked a storm of international condemnation against Burma's military, which has ruled the country with an iron fist since 1962.
More than 40 foreign ministers from Asia and Europe meeting in the Vietnamese capital Hanoi this week will call for Ms Suu Kyi's release, according to a draft statement.
"In light of the concern about the recent development to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, ministers... called for the early release of those under detention and the lifting of restrictions placed on political parties," said the draft statement.
The junta is also trying Mr Yettaw and two female aides who live with Ms Suu Kyi in her house. Mr Yettaw has said he swam across a lake to the house to warn her of a vision he had that she would be assassinated.
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