ENGLISH DEYEA NEWS

(photo: AP /David Longstreath)

The Statesman | BANGKOK, The United Nations has ruled the continued detention of Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Ms Aung San Suu Kyi violates the country's own laws as well as those of the international community, a legal document says.

Ms Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has spent 13 of the last 19 years under house arrest, with the ruling junta yearly extending her detention despite international outcries. “The latest renewal (2008) of the order to place Ms Suu Kyi under house arrest not solely violates international law but also national domestic laws of Myanmar,” said a legal opinion by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions that has been sent to the Myanmar government.

Although the ruling is unlikely to spring Ms Suu Kyi from detention, it is uncommon for the world body to accuse a member country of violating its own laws, and while the junta has always marched to its own tune it has also resented 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 Myanmar'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 tranquility,” the provision of the 1975 law authorities have pointed to as the reason for her continued detention.
Mr Jared Genser, a Washington-based attorney retained by Ms Suu Kyi's family who provided the document to The Associated Press, said while the United Nations group earlier found her detention arbitrary and in violation of international law, it was the first time it cited the junta as failing to abide by its own law.

He said the government of Myanmar, also known as Burma, has not responded to the UN's legal arguments and has not commented on why Ms Suu Kyi is still being detained. Ms Suu Kyi, who rose to prominence during a pro-democracy uprising in 1988, was placed under arrest before her party swept the 1990 general elections, which the junta did not recognize. Over the years, the government released her several times only to have her virtually isolated again in her compound in Yangon.

The United Nations has for years attempted without success to bring about political reform and a dialogue between Ms Suu Kyi and the military.