Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi in detention 10 years: activists

October 24, 2005 – (BurmaNet) Myanmar's pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi on Monday marked what her supporters said is a total of 10 years in detention, as campaigners overseas pushed the United Nations to take strong action.

While there was no public recognition or demonstration on the streets of the capital where security remained tight as usual, events were to take place in London and New York, pro-democracy groups and supporters said.

Supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi, secretary general of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), estimate that adding three periods of detention and house arrest -- 1989-1995, 2000-2002 and May 2003-October 24 -- equals 10 years.

Aung San Suu Kyi, whom some locals call "The Lady", also spent her 60th birthday on June 19 under house arrest at her lakeside compound in suburban Yangon. Her only visitor is a doctor. Her telephone line has been cut.

The NLD scored a landslide victory in 1990 elections but the military -- which has run the country since 1962 -- ignored the result.

Ex-Myanmar Prime Minister Khin Nyunt, the most senior general willing to hold discussions with Aung San Suu Kyi, was purged in October 2004 and is himself now under house arrest in Yangon.

"The pattern of detaining, releasing and detaining Aung San Suu Kyi is symbolic of the one step forward, two steps back strategy the regime has perpetrated on the entire country," Debbie Stothard, coordinator of the Alternative ASEAN Network on Burma, said in Bangkok.

The military rulers of Myanmar, formerly called Burma, are afraid of releasing the Nobel peace laureate because "they fear the immense influence she has on the people in Burma and in the international community," Stothard added.

NLD officials in Yangon could not be reached for comment.

The London-based Burma Campaign UK was to demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament in London on Monday.

It also released an 83-page report, "Ten years of detention: too many years of empty words", which said that although the UN had passed 27 resolutions on Myanmar, all had failed and the world body needed a coherent strategy.

"The repetitive words of fourteen years' worth of UN reports, resolutions and statements, and the efforts of a sequence of UN Special Envoys and Rapporteurs have failed to affect any positive change in Burma whatsoever," it said.

"Instead, at each turn, Burma's generals have opted to reject, snub and embarrass a UN system whose approach to Burma has been mired by an absence of both strategy and sense of urgency."

In September, former Czech president Vaclav Havel and retired South African archbishop Desmond Tutu sent a report to the United Nations calling for new efforts to bring reforms to impoverished Myanmar.

They recommended that the UN Security Council adopt a resolution compelling Myanmar to work with Secretary General Kofi Annan in implementing a national reconciliation plan that would bring a democratically elected government.

The junta says it is pursuing a "road map" to democracy and a new session of the National Convention, where handpicked delegates have discussed drafting a new constitution on and off for more than a decade, could resume as early as next month.

Aung San Suu Kyi's cousin and a former prime minister in exile, Sein Win, told the BBC on Monday that Myanmar's rulers had only partly succeeded in limiting her influence.

"On the whole, Aung San Suu Kyi is still the leader of the people," US-based Sein Win said.

"And nothing can be done -- national reconciliation, or development of the country, what we wanted -- without Aung San Suu Kyi's participation and role."

From: http://www.burmanet.org/