Naypyitaw, Myanmar - Myanmar's police chief on Sunday
claimed to know nothing about a hunger strike being staged by Nobel
laureate and political dissident Aung San Suu Kyi to protest her
five-plus years under house arrest.
Addressing a press conference in Naypyitaw, the military's new
capital situated 350 kilometres north of Yangon, Police Chief Khin
Yee said Suu Kyi had recently been visited by her lawyer and doctor
and neither had told the government about her hunger strike.
On Friday, the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD)
party issued a statement claiming that Suu Kyi, who has been under
house arrest in Yangon since May 2003, had refused food deliveries to
her home-cum-jail for the past three weeks to protest her ongoing
detention.
The NLD said Suu Kyi had refused to receive food packages from
friends to protest her unlawful detention which has 'exceeded the
legal limit.'
Suu Kyi is under house detention in her family home on charges of
disturbing the peace. The detention followed an attack by pro-
military thugs on Suu Kyi's convoy in Tepeyin, Sagaing division in
northern Myanmar on May 30, 2003. Several of her followers were
killed in the melee.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has been kept in near complete
isolation, allowed monthly visits by her doctor and occasional visits
by UN special envoys.
Last month she refused to meet with UN special envoy to Myanmar
Ibrahim Gambari on the grounds that he had done nothing to secure her
freedom.
Over the past two months Suu Kyi has been allowed three meetings
with her lawyer Kyi Win, which is unusual, and last saw her doctor
Tin Myo on August 1.
Myanmar Police Chief Khin Yee said neither man had mentioned Suu
Kyi's hunger strike to authorities. He added that the dissident's
release would be in 'accordance with the law.'
Under Myanmar emergency law political prisoners can only be kept
under detention for a maximum of five years on charges of disturbing
the peace, but Suu Kyi's detention was last May extended for another
six months, raising legal questions.
Myanmar's ruling junta has been sending mixed signals about the
duration of Suu Kyi's incarceration.
There have been hints that she may be released within six months,
but many observers believe it is unlikely that she will be released
before the next general election slated for 2010.
Suu Kyi's NLD party won the 1990 polls by a landslide, but the
party has been denied power by the military for 18 years and she has
been kept under house arrest for around 13 of the past 18 years.
Myanmar has been under military rule since 1962. Ironically, it
was Suu Kyi's father, Aung San, who fathered the military
establishment as part of the country's independence movement from its
former colonial master Britain.
Suu Kyi, who won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, is deemed
Myanmar's democracy icon and one of the few opposition leaders with
enough popular and international support to undermine the military's
monopoly of political power in the south-east Asian nation.
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