Slight Freedoms for Suu Kyi

Myanmar’s military junta recently gave the imprisoned opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi access to letters from her family and some international news magazines.

According to the International Herald Tribune, for the past three weeks Suu Kyi has refused food deliveries to the villa where she is under house arrest, leading to speculation she may have mounted a hunger strike.

Her National League for Democracy — which won a landslide election in 1990 but was shut out of power by the military junta — said she rejected the food “to denounce her continuing detention, which is unfair under the law.”

Suu Kyi, who has spent 13 of the past 19 years under house arrest, will be allowed to receive mail from her two sons and to read magazines like Newsweek and Time.

The junta will also loosen limitations placed on Suu Kyi’s daughter and housekeeper, the article said.

–Julia Hengst/Newsdesk.org

Source:

“Myanmar loosens some strictures on Aung San Suu Kyi”
International Herald Tribune, September 14, 2008

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