Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi is "preparing for the worst", her lawyer said
Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor
The novels of John le Carré and biographies of Winston Churchill are among the books that Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese democracy leader and Nobel Prize winner, is assembling in anticipation of a long prison sentence when a court in Rangoon delivers its verdict on her today.
Her lawyers say that she has resigned herself to a guilty verdict, after her two-and-half-month trial for allegedly breaking the terms of her house arrest. If her fears are realised, she will be confined, not in the large house where she was formerly detained, but in one of Burma’s jails, where more than 2,000 other political prisoners also languish.
“I think Daw [Madam] Aung San Suu Kyi is preparing for the worst,” said her lawyer, Nyan Win, who is also spokesman for her political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD). “She has said that if she has to stay in prison for a long time, she has only one thing to do and that is reading.
“She is collecting many books in English, French and Burmese.”
Ms Suu Kyi and two of her companions have been on trial since May for giving shelter to John Yettaw, an eccentric American who swam uninvited to her lakeside home in central Rangoon. She gave him food and allowed him to stay overnight after he complained of exhaustion. The prosecutors argue that this violated the rules of the house arrest to which Ms Suu Kyi has been confined for almost 14 of the past 20 years.
Her lawyers argue that she did not hand him over to the authorities to avoid bringing trouble on him and on the police who were supposed to have been guarding her house. They also argue that the law under which she is charged was invalidated 21 years by the same military government that has kept her locked up for so long.
However, Burma’s courts are firmly under the control of the ruling junta, and almost never find in favour of political prisoners. The likely outcome of the case was hinted at in a commentary in the government newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar. “A handful of politicians with excessive greed, anger and conceit are troubling the people, and millions of people are impoverished,” it wrote, in an obvious reference to the NLD which won a general election in 1990 but has been denied power ever since.
“We have to ward off subversive elements and disruptions. Look out if some arouse the people to take to the streets to come to power. In reality they are anti-democracy elements, not pro-democracy activists.”
Even if Ms Suu Kyi were acquitted or, more likely, pardoned by Burma’s senior general, Than Shwe, she would remain under house arrest and activist groups are warning against rewarding the regime for acquitting her of charges that should never have been brought against her in the first place.
“Even if Aung San Suu Kyi were released, there would still be war crimes and crimes against humanity being committed by the dictatorship in Burma,” Mark Farmaner of the Burma Campaign UK said. “Ethnic women and girls would still be being raped and killed, there would still be more than 2,100 political prisoners. There would still be no freedoms, no rule of law and no respect for human rights.”
Source: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/asia/article6733533.ece
Comments
Post a Comment