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Myanmar's Suu Kyi faces trial, critics outraged
Reuters - May 18, 2009
Aung Hla Tun, Yangon – Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi faced a prison trial on Monday that could see her locked away for five years, sparking threats of tougher international sanctions against the military regime.
Myanmar's generals have ignored the outcry over what critics say are trumped-up charges to keep the Nobel Peace laureate in detention after her latest spell of house arrest ends on May 27 after six years.
At least one Suu Kyi supporter was arrested near Yangon's Insein Central Prison, where some 200 members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) had gathered as her closed-door trial got under way.
They were watched by armed police manning barbed-wire barricades outside the prison and members of a pro-junta militia. Plain-clothes officers kept busy snapping photographs of the protest. Businesses in the area were ordered to close.
An NLD official said the trial heard testimony from the police officer who filed a complaint against Suu Kyi and her two female companions. Suu Kyi did not address the court. Her trial was adjourned until Tuesday morning, the official said.
The government has called 22 witnesses against Suu Kyi. If convicted, the 63-year-old faces three to five years in jail. "She is ready to tell the truth that she never broke the law," her lawyer Kyi Win said.
US diplomats were allowed into the prison where John Yettaw, the American intruder who triggered the case against Suu Kyi by sneaking into her lakeside villa earlier this month, also faced trial on several charges.
Clampdown
Critics say the trial is aimed at keeping the charismatic opposition leader in detention ahead of multi-party elections in 2010, derided by the West as a sham aimed at entrenching more than four decades of military rule in the former Burma.
The generals have not forgotten the NLD's landslide election victory in 1990, which the military rejected.
"The trial is all about keeping any voices of dissent silent in the run-up to rigged elections next year," said Zoya Phan of the Burma Campaign UK, which said demonstrations would be held at Myanmar embassies in 20 cities around the world on Monday.
The military has detained Suu Kyi for more than 13 of the past 19 years, much of that time at her Yangon home guarded by police, with her phone line cut and visitors restricted.
Yettaw, a 53-year-old Missouri resident who used home-made flippers to swim to Suu Kyi's home this month, is charged with immigration violations, encouraging others to break the law and entering a restricted area.
His motives are unclear. He swam to her home before, on November 30 last year, and left a copy of the Book of Mormon after she refused to see him, according to a copy of the police complaint translated by the US Campaign for Burma, a pro-democracy group.
He tried again on the night of May 3. "This time, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi allowed him to stay at her residence until the night of May 5, 2009, spoke with him and provided him food and drinks," the police complaint said.
Kyi Win said Suu Kyi had told Yettaw to leave, but he refused. She did not report him to authorities because "she did not want anybody to get into trouble because of her," he said.
Western governments, the United Nations, human rights groups and fellow Nobel laureates have condemned the charges against Suu Kyi and called for her immediate release.
In Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the group, which renewed sanctions against Myanmar in April, should consider tougher measures in protest at Suu Kyi's treatment.
"It's not the moment to lower sanctions, it's the moment in any case to increase them," he said ahead of a meeting of EU foreign ministers.
US President Barack Obama renewed sanctions against the regime on Friday, saying its actions and policies, including the jailing of more than 2,000 political prisoners, continued to pose a serious threat to US interests.
The reaction from Asian neighbors, which have an eye on Myanmar's rich timber, gas and mineral reserves, has been mixed.
China and India have been silent, but the Philippine government said it was "deeply troubled and outraged over the filing of trumped-up charges" against Suu Kyi and worried about her health in the country's most notorious jail.
"These recent incidents will surely impede the process of national reconciliation and the roadmap to democracy in Myanmar," Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto G. Romulo said.
Asian governments have favored a policy of engagement, but neither that nor the sanctions imposed by the West have coaxed meaningful reforms from junta leader Senior General Than Shwe, who is widely believed to loathe Suu Kyi.
[Additional reporting by Rose Francisco in Manila and David Brunnstrom in Brussels; Writing by Darren Schuettler; Editing by Alan Raybould and Paul Tait.]
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