Burma extends detention of Aung San suu Kyi

Burma’s ruling military junta extended the detention of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi today, defying international pressure to free the Nobel laureate.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and other supporters of Suu Kyi were hopeful she would be released when the order for her house arrest expired Saturday. However, a government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he is not authorised to speak to the press, said her detention has been extended but it wasn’t immediately known for how long.

Police armed with batons were deployed near Suu Kyi’s lakeside residence on University Avenue in Yangon early today. Residents said they saw police erecting barbed-wire barricades at each end of the street, closing it to traffic Saturday morning.

“This is a big disappointment and a major setback to national reconciliation,” said Nyan Win, a spokesman for Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy. “The extension is exactly opposite of what we expected.”

Annan, visiting neighbouring Thailand yesterday, appealed to Burma junta chief Senior Gen. Than Shwe “to do the right thing” and free the 1991 Nobel peace prize winner to ”allow the government and the people, not only to build the nation together, but to focus on the essential issue of economic and social development.”

The top diplomats of two of Burma’s neighbours in Southeast Asia, who had been hopeful for her release, were disappointed to hear of the extension.

“I am very surprised. I was hoping ... that they would not extend the house arrest. But that is their right. Of course, we are disappointed,” Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar told reporters.

He said he hoped to see his Burma counterpart during the two-day ministerial talks of the 114-member Non-aligned Movement starting Monday, but declined to say whether he would discuss this issue.

In Thailand, Foreign Minister Kantathi Suphamongkhon said, ”I was hoping the release should come today. It was a good opportunity... We would like to see Burma back in the realm of the international community, so progress in national reconciliation is something of importance. So I’m disappointed.”

He said Thailand would “work with Burma to try to bring this situation to a speedy and concrete development soon.”

The junta took power in 1988 after crushing vast pro-democracy demonstrations. In 1990, it refused to hand over power when Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won a landslide victory in general elections.

Suu Kyi, who has spent about 10 of the last 17 years in detention, was most recently taken into custody on May 30, 2003, after her motorcade was attacked by a pro-junta mob as she was making a political tour of northern Burma.

She has been held at her Yangon residence and not allowed visitors or telephone contact with the outside.

Hopes had run high that she would be released after a recent visit by UN Under-secretary-General Ibrahim Gambari, who became the first foreigner in more than two years to see Suu Kyi. He also was granted a rare audience with Than Shwe.

However, sceptics had suggested that a release at this immediate moment was highly unlikely, since it coincides with several anniversaries around which opponents of the junta could rally.

Saturday is the anniversary of the NLD’s election victory, which the party plans to mark at its headquarters in Yangon.

The government’s rationale for detaining Suu Kyi has been that she could be a threat to public order.