Burma’s Suu Kyi trial to resume today

AS AUNG San Suu Kyi’s trial enters its second week, taxi driver Aung Thein offered a widely held view on its eventual outcome.

“She’s innocent,” said the 45-year-old law graduate who drives an old Toyota on the streets of army-ruled Burma’s main city, Yangon.

“But I’m not sure the court will go according to the law. It hardly does so,” he said of the trial, due to resume today.

Suu Kyi pleaded not guilty on Friday after a prison court formally charged the Nobel Peace laureate for breaking the terms of her house arrest by allowing an uninvited American intruder inside her lakeside home.

John Yettaw, who swam to Suu Kyi’s home on May 4, and Suu Kyi’s two female housemates were also charged and pleaded not guilty.

The court’s decision to charge her came as no surprise in Burma, where the military holds sway over a legal system that has put more than 2,000 political prisoners behind bars.

Foreign minister Nyan Win said last week Suu Kyi’s trial “will proceed fairly according to the law”.

But diplomats who were given a brief glimpse of the trial inside Rangoon’s Insein prison said it appeared “scripted”.

After 47 years of unbroken military rule, Burma’s courts have a long history of stretching laws to suit the generals, activist lawyers say.

“I’m sure they will jail Daw Suu,” said Aung Thein, a prominent lawyer who was helping prepare her defence when his law license was revoked last week.

The court is expected to hear from more prosecution witnesses today .

Suu Kyi and her two housemates are charged with violating a tough security law that has kept her a virtual prisoner at her home on Yangon’s Inya lake.

Prosecutors argue Suu Kyi broke the conditions of her house arrest by allowing Yettaw to stay for two days and accepting several items from him. They included a copy of the Book of Mormon, two black robes, sunglasses and a flashlight.

Suu Kyi insists she did not invite Yettaw and blames the regime for lax security at her home.

She has spent more than 13 of the past 19 years in detention, most of those at her home under police guard, with her phone line cut and visitors restricted.

Critics say the trial appears aimed at keeping the charismatic National League for Democracy (NLD) leader in detention until after 2010 elections, derided by the West as a sham to entrench the military’s grip on the country.

Yettaw, who is charged with immigration violations, illegal swimming and violating the same security law, told the court last week that he had a dream Suu Kyi’s life was in danger and wanted to warn her.