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Suu Kyi detention violates Burma's own law, says UN
Ed Harris24 Mar 2009
The continued imprisonment of Aung San Suu Kyi violates Burma's own laws as well as those of the international community, the UN warned today as it called for the immediate release of the pro-democracy leader.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has spent 13 of the last 19 years under house arrest, with the ruling junta in Burma, also known as Myanmar, extending her detention each year despite international outcry.
In a legal document, the UN says: "The latest renewal of the order to place Ms Suu Kyi under house arrest not solely violates international law but also national domestic laws of Myanmar."
The UN working group on arbitrary detentions has sent its legal opinion to the Burmese government. The ruling is unlikely to see Ms Suu Kyi freed from detention, but it is unusual for the world body to accuse a member country of violating its own laws.
The junta and its leader, Senior General Than Shwe, rarely heed global opinion but analysts say the regime resents being regarded as an international pariah.
The working group, an arm of the UN Human Rights Council, said Ms Suu Kyi was being held under Burma's 1975 State Protection Law, which only allows renewable arrest orders for a maximum of five years. This five-year period ended at the end of May 2008.
The opinion also questioned whether Ms Suu Kyi represented a threat to the "security of the State or public peace and tranquillity" - the 1975 law which the junta uses to justify her continued detention.
Jared Genser, a Washington lawyer hired by Ms Suu Kyi's family, said this was the first time the UN had condemned the junta for failing to abide by its own law.
"I am under no illusion that the junta will be listening to the United Nations," Mr Genser said. "There is no quick and easy answer to the problem of Burma, so we have to take it one step forward at a time." He said the junta had not responded to the UN's views.
