Aung San Suu Kyi seeks clarification on confinement (Roundup)

Aug 12, 2009, 12:28 GMT

   Yangon - Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is seeking clarifications on her new 18-month term of house arrest that prompted international outrage, her lawyers said Wednesday.

   'Daw (Mrs) Aung San Suu Kyi said that she needed clarification on the eight conditions which restricted for her stay because she did not understand them well,' Nyan Win, one of the lawyers told German Press Agency dpa after meeting the Nobel Peace Prize laureate at her home.

   On Tuesday a Myanmar court sentenced Suu Kyi to three years imprisonment, which was commuted to 18 months of house arrest by military junta leader Senior General Than Shwe.

    In a statement read to the court, Than Shwe said he had decided to mitigate Suu Kyi's sentence because she was the daughter of Myanmar independence leader Aung San, to assure peace and security, pave the way for democracy and because there was 'no hatred' between Suu Kyi and the generals.

   'She also said that she wanted to look into the four points positively that Senior General Than Shwe mentioned in his yesterday order. It will be beneficial if those points can be implemented in accordance with his words,' Nyan Win said.

   Than Shwe also said Suu Kyi might be amnestied soon if she complied with the conditions of her house arrest which include staying within the compound, receiving only guests allowed by authorities and permission to watch state TV and receive state newspapers.

   'I will try to get a certified copy of the verdict, and after I've got it, we will appeal to the Divisional Court for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi to overturn the guilty verdict,' her attorney said.

   The 18-month detention period will keep Suu Kyi out of the political picture while the regime, which has been internationally condemned for a range of human rights abuses, pushes through its plans to stage a general election some time next year that promises to be neither free nor fair.

   Suu Kyi's ongoing detention meant that it was unlikely that her National League for Democracy opposition party, which won the last polls in 1990 but has been denied power ever since, would participate in next year's election.

   It also dashed hopes that prior to the polls, the regime might open a dialogue with the democracy icon, whom it has detained for 14 of the past 20 years, and consider amending the 2008 constitution, which essentially cements the military's control over any democratically elected government.

   US national John William Yettaw, who swam to Suu Kyi's residence on May 3 and stayed uninvited until May 5 - thus providing a pretext for the military regime to accuse Suu Kyi of violating the terms of her detention - was sentenced to seven years in prison with labour.

   The US government is likely to seek his release.

   Pro-democracy activists have sent a letter to US Senator Jim Webb, chairman of the Subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific Affairs, urging him to not allow the junta to manipulate his planned visit to Myanmar later this week.

   'We are concerned that the military regime will manipulate and exploit your visit and propagandize that you endorse the trial of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and the imprisonment of over 2,100 political prisoners, their human rights abuses on the people of Burma and their systematic, widespread and ongoing atrocities against the ethnic minorities,' said the joint statement sent to the US embassy in Yangon by the All Burma Monks Alliance, 88 Generation Students and All Burma Federation of Student Unions.

   Webb, a proponent of change in the US foreign policy toward Myanmar, was expected to appeal for a swift release of Yettaw during his visit.