Extension of Suu Kyi's house arrest condemned

BURMA: Burma's police have told democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi her house arrest has been extended under a law which allows for such detention for up to a year, an opposition spokesman said yesterday.

U Lwin, spokesman for Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), said police had visited the Nobel laureate's lakeside villa in Rangoon on the weekend where she has been under house arrest since September 26th. "Her detention has been extended for one year," U Lwin said.

No details were available beyond the legal code under which she can be held for 12 months, but U Lwin said the NLD took it to mean she could be confined to her home until September 2005.

There was no official confirmation of Ms Suu Kyi's extended detention, which was swiftly condemned by human rights groups.

"We are calling for the immediate and unconditional release of her and all others who are wrongly confined," said Ms Katherine Gerson, a spokeswoman for London-based Amnesty International.

Ms Suu Kyi (59) has been confined to her home on the capital's leafy University Avenue for much of the past 15 years, her phone cut off and requiring official permission to receive visitors. Her latest detention began in May last year after a violent clash between opposition and government supporters which Washington said was orchestrated by the junta, a charge it denies.

Her confinement has outraged the West and embarrassed Burma's neighbours in the 10-nation Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which Burma is due to chair in 2006.

The news came as ASEAN leaders held their annual summit in Laos. The leaders yesterday abandoned attempts to censure Burma publicly for its human rights abuses, with officials admitting in private that they could not take effective action against Burma's military regime without the support of China.

The summit ended with a declaration that made no reference to Burma, despite earlier promises that they would ask the junta "hard questions" about its stalled plans for democratisation.

ASEAN's silence marks a climbdown from the stand it took a year and a half ago, when regional governments issued a joint call for Ms Suu Kyi's freedom.

Burma supplies China with timber, minerals and other natural resources, and has allowed Beijing to establish naval facilities in Burmese territory, and in return receives diplomatic and financial support.