Burma's police chief clueless about Suu Kyi hunger strike

The Nation - Published on September 7, 2008

Burma's police chief clueless about Suu Kyi hunger strike

Naypyitaw, Burma - Burma's police chief on Sunday claimed to know nothing about a hunger strike being staged by Nobel laureate and political dissident Aung San Suu Kyi to protest her five-plus years under house arrest.

Addressing a press conference in Naypyitaw, the military's new capital situated 350 kilometres north of Rangoon, Police Chief Khin Yee said Suu Kyi had recently been visited by her lawyer and doctor and neither had told the government about her hunger strike.

On Friday, the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party issued a statement claiming that Suu Kyi, who has been under house arrest in Rangoon since May 2003, had refused food deliveries to her home-cum-jail for the past three weeks to protest her ongoing detention.

The NLD said Suu Kyi had refused to receive food packages from friends to protest her unlawful detention which has "exceeded the legal limit."

Suu Kyi is under house detention in her family home on charges of disturbing the peace. The detention followed an attack by pro- military thugs on Suu Kyi's convoy in Tepeyin, Sagaing division in northern Burma on May 30, 2003. Several of her followers were killed in the melee.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been kept in near complete isolation, allowed monthly visits by her doctor and occasional visits by UN special envoys.

Last month she refused to meet with UN special envoy to Burma Ibrahim Gambari on the grounds that he had done nothing to secure her freedom.

Over the past two months Suu Kyi has been allowed three meetings with her lawyer Kyi Win, which is unusual, and last saw her doctor Tin Myo on August 1.

Burma's Police Chief Khin Yee said neither man had mentioned Suu Kyi's hunger strike to authorities. He added that the dissident's release would be in "accordance with the law."

Under Myanmar emergency law political prisoners can only be kept under detention for a maximum of five years on charges of disturbing the peace, but Suu Kyi's detention was last May extended for another six months, raising legal questions.

Burma's ruling junta has been sending mixed signals about the duration of Suu Kyi's incarceration.

There have been hints that she may be released within six months, but many observers believe it is unlikely that she will be released before the next general election slated for 2010.

Suu Kyi's NLD party won the 1990 polls by a landslide, but the party has been denied power by the military for 18 years and she has been kept under house arrest for around 13 of the past 18 years.

Burma has been under military rule since 1962. Ironically, it was Suu Kyi's father, Aung San, who fathered the military establishment as part of the country's independence movement from its former colonial master Britain.

Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, is deemed Burma's democracy icon and one of the few opposition leaders with enough popular and international support to undermine the military's monopoly of political power in the south-east Asian nation.

September 7, 2008 10:28 pm (Thai local time)

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