Burma political prisoner set to be released

26-05-2008
DEADLINE: Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest since May 2003. Under law, she must be either released or put on trial.

BANGKOK — The world's most famous political prisoner, Aung San Suu Kyi, was due to be freed from house arrest today, but her fate has gone largely unnoticed amid the destruction of Cyclone Nargis.

U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon avoided any mention of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate yesterday during a conference with more than 50 nations to discuss relief.

"We must think about people just now, not politics," Mr. Ban told a group of local and wire service reporters, who were permitted to cover the conference in Rangoon, Burma's largest city.

Mrs. Suu Kyi has spent 12 of the past 18 years under house arrest. She was last confined to her two-story lakefront home in May 2003, and the term has been renewed every year since.

But this year's deadline reaches a critical point.

Under Burmese law, no one can be held longer than five years without being released or put on trial, U.S. lawyer Jared Genser, who was hired by Mrs. Suu Kyi's family to push for her release, told the Associated Press.

"Their failure to abide by their own law by refusing to release [Mrs. Suu Kyi] ... is a clear slap in the face to Ban Ki-moon and the ASEAN diplomats and others coming into town," Mr. Genser told the AP, referring to the member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. "They are out of time to hold her under their own law."

Mrs. Suu Kyi has always been able to walk out of her home if she agrees to leave Burma. The military junta most likely would never allow her to return, which is why she did not attend the funeral in England when her husband, British academic Michael Aris, died several years ago.