WORLD LEADERS rounded on Burma’s military rulers yesterday after the country’s pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, was given a further 18 months’ detention for breaking the terms of her house arrest.
The 64-year-old Nobel peace laureate had been accused of harbouring John Yettaw, an eccentric American who swam uninvited to her lakeside compound in Rangoon in early May.
Ms Suu Kyi’s lawyers immediately appealed to the UN to try to secure her release, claiming that her detention was a violation of international human rights law.
UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said he strongly deplored the verdict and urged Burma’s leaders “to immediately and unconditionally release” her.
The sentence, which came after a court in Rangoon initially sentenced her to three years’ hard labour, means she will play no part in the elections the military junta has promised to hold next year.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton joined calls for Ms Suu Kyi’s release. “She should not have been tried,” she said during a trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“She should not have been convicted. We continue to call for her release.”
British prime minister Gordon Brown said that the sentence was further proof that the military regime in Burma was “determined to act with total disregard for accepted standards of the rule of law and in defiance of international opinion”.
The EU, meanwhile, said it would step up sanctions against the regime introduced after the violent suppression of pro-democracy protests in September 2007, with Britain and France calling for global arms and economic embargoes.
Ms Suu Kyi learned her fate in a few minutes of courtroom drama, witnessed by journalists and diplomats from the same countries that are calling for her immediate and unconditional release.
Shortly after the court sentenced her to three years’ hard labour, the home minister, Maj Gen Maung Oo, walked into the courtroom and announced that the country’s leader, Gen Than Shwe, had halved the sentence and would allow her to serve it in her home.
Gen Than Shwe said he had reduced the sentence to “maintain peace and tranquillity” and because Ms Suu Kyi was the daughter of Aung San, a revered hero who won Burma’s independence from Britain in 1948.
A diplomat who was present said Ms Suu Kyi looked “unfazed” after the sentence was read out. “It didn’t seem to catch her by surprise at all,” he said.
The announcement minutes later that her sentence had been changed was “a choreographed attempt to get us to witness the leniency, clemency and humanity of the general [Than Shwe]”, the diplomat said.
“But if the aim was to keep her out of circulation for the elections, then that is what they achieved.” – (Guardian service)