November 4, 2009 — Updated 1044 GMT (1844 HKT)

(CNN) — U.S. diplomats met with imprisoned pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi on Wednesday, Myanmar TV showed.

Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell and deputy Scot Marciel were shown greeting her outside the Inya Lake Hotel in the former capital, Yangon, before they went inside for talks.

The American diplomats met with Myanmar’s prime minister on Tuesday.

The visit is part of a shift in U.S. policy toward the Southeast Asian country that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced in September, in which the United States would try to directly engage with the military leaders of Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, without abandoning existing sanctions.

Suu Kyi’s detention has been a key point of contention between the United States and Myanmar. And critics have accused Myanmar’s ruling junta of convicting Suu Kyi, 64, to keep her from participating in 2010 elections.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has been confined in her house for about 14 of the past 20 years.

She was sentenced to another 18 months of house arrest after John Yettaw, an American man, swam uninvited to her home in Yangon.

In August, U.S. Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia flew to Myanmar to secure Yettaw’s release and became the first American official to meet with junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe.

© 2009 Cable News Network. Don’t repost on Balkingpoints…

Detained Activist Taken to Meet Myanmar Official; Possibility of Cooperation between Gov’t, Pro-Democracy Leader

YANGON, Myanmar, Oct. 3, 2009

(AP) Detained Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was escorted into surprise talks with a junta official Saturday, a week after writing a letter to the military leader proposing a new era of cooperation.

The unannounced meeting between Suu Kyi and Relations Minister Aung Kyi lasted 45 minutes and took place at a government guest house near her lakeside home in Yangon, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was driven to the meeting in a police motorcade, the officials said. Details of the talks were not immediately known.

The meeting came a week after Suu Kyi sent a letter to junta chief Senior Gen. Than Shwe. In it, she said she is willing to cooperate with the junta in having international sanctions lifted and proposed that she meet with Western diplomats to discuss the measures, according to her National League for Democracy party.

“I don’t know what they discussed, but I believe it could be related to the letter sent last week to the senior general,” said Suu Kyi’s lawyer Nyan Win, who is also a spokesman for her opposition party.

The letter appeared to be a confidence-building gesture to the junta. Suu Kyi, 64, had previously welcomed sanctions as a way to pressure the junta to achieve political reconciliation with the pro-democracy movement.

The movement has insisted on concessions from the government if they are to work together, particularly the freeing of political prisoners and the reopening of party offices around the country.

Suu Kyi’s meeting with Aung Kyi was their sixth since his post was created in October 2007 and the first since January 2008. The job of relations minister was created at the urging of U.N. special envoy Ibrahim Gambari after the U.N. Security Council urged the junta to open talks with the country’s pro-democracy movement.

Suu Kyi has been detained for 14 of the last 20 years.

On Friday, a court rejected Suu Kyi’s appeal against the extension of her widely condemned house arrest. The decision was expected and was another reminder that the military junta treads warily when considering concessions to the opposition or improving relations with the West.

The United States announced last week that it is modifying its tough policy of isolating the military regime and will instead try to engage the junta through high-level talks.

Washington said it will still maintain its political and economic sanctions against the regime. It and other Western nations apply sanctions because of Myanmar’s poor human rights record and its failure to turn over power to Suu Kyi’s party after it won the last elections in 1990.

Friday’s court ruling against Suu Kyi upheld her August conviction for breaking the terms of her house arrest by briefly sheltering an uninvited American at her home earlier this year. She was sentenced to an additional 18 months of house arrest, which means she cannot participate in elections scheduled for next year, the first in Myanmar in two decades.

Suu Kyi’s legal team said Friday they plan to appeal to the Supreme Court within 60 days.

Suu Kyi was barred from attending the appeal and was informed of the ruling by her physician, who visited her later Friday, Nyan Win said. He said authorities have agreed to allow her personal doctor, Tin Myo Win, to visit her once a month.

On his last visit two weeks ago, the doctor said Suu Kyi had low blood pressure, but after Friday’s visit said she was well, Nyan Win said.

© MMIX The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

By Aung Hla Tun
Fri Sep 25, 4:39 AM

YANGON (Reuters) – Myanmar’s detained Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi will support U.S. plans to engage with the isolated nation but only if opposition groups are involved in any dialogue, her party said.

Suu Kyi’s backing followed U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s announcement that Washington wanted dialogue with the country’s military rulers but would not lift its tight sanctions on them.

“(Suu Kyi) said she had always supported the idea of engagement. However, that engagement should be done with both the military government and the democratic forces,” said Nyan Win, spokesman for her National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

Nyan Win met with Suu Kyi on Thursday after U.S. embassy officials in Yangon briefed the NLD about the rapprochement plans. Nyan Win gave no details about what was discussed.

Analysts said the development was positive for both sides although it was far from clear what the two sides could agree on.

Speaking in New York on Wednesday, Clinton did not elaborate on the engagement plans, giving no indication about a timeframe, who would lead talks and what demands would be made in order for sanctions to be lifted.

The United States has imposed sanctions on Myanmar since 1988, when an estimated 3,000 people were killed in an army crackdown on pro-democracy activists.

U.S. ties with Myanmar appear to be less frosty than in recent years and last month’s visit by U.S. Senator Jim Webb — the first by a senior U.S. official in more than a decade — was hailed by the junta as a big success.

Clinton said in July that the United States would help Myanmar if its army rulers held free, fair and inclusive elections and released Suu Kyi, who has been in detention, or “protective custody,” for 14 of the past 20 years.

POSITIVE STEP

Suu Kyi was given another 18 months under house arrest last month for letting an American intruder stay at her home for two nights. Critics said that ruling was designed to keep her out of elections next year, the first in the former Burma since 1990.

Analysts said the change in approach was a positive step that could eventually lead to reforms in a country crippled by five decades of economic mismanagement and oppressive army rule.

“The regime wants to normalize relations with the U.S. to convince the world and the Burmese people that their elections will be legitimate,” said Win Min, a Burmese exile and lecturer at Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand.

“This engagement will be a gradual process. We shouldn’t expect too much, but it’s a lot better than the previous policy.”

Myanmar analyst Aung Naing Oo said dialogue would be advantageous for both sides. Engagement could eventually bring big benefits to Myanmar, while allowing the United States to gain a strategic foothold in a country traditionally allied with its powerful neighbor China.

“What’s most significant is that there’s a willingness from both sides. They know they have to talk and they know they need to build trust,” said Aung Naing Oo.

“Although it’s a positive and pragmatic move, the biggest stumbling block will be the negotiations. For this to work, there needs to be patience, compromise and a real understanding of the mindset of both parties.”

Copyright © 2009 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved. Don’t repost on Balkingpoints.

____

Burma Releases Detained American
Webb Says He Also Requested Suu Kyi’s Freedom

BANGKOK, Aug. 16 — Burmese authorities have released the American whose uninvited visit to the home of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi led to her being sentenced to 18 more months of house arrest, allowing him to leave the country Sunday with Sen. James Webb (D-Va.).

“He’s not a well man. He had a medical incident this morning when they read him his orders of deportation. He’s now undergoing a thorough medical review in a hospital and soon he will be able to return to his family,” Webb told a news conference in Bangkok after returning from a two-day visit to Burma, also known as Myanmar.

John Yettaw, 54, a Vietnam War veteran who suffers from epilepsy and post-traumatic stress disorder, was sentenced last week to seven years in jail for swimming across the lake behind Suu Kyi’s house to warn her that he had had a vision in which she was killed by terrorists.

Webb, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, is the most senior U.S. official to visit Burma in more than two decades. He used his rare meeting with the government’s leadership to ask for Yettaw’s release on humanitarian grounds, for a visit with Suu Kyi and for her release.

“They granted two of those three requests in the meetings. They have not yet communicated on the third,” Webb said Sunday.

Although he expressed his gratitude to Burmese authorities for freeing Yettaw and allowing him to see Suu Kyi, he was careful not to say he is optimistic about her release.

“I am hopeful that as the months go forward, they will take a look at it,” he said of his request that Suu Kyi be released.

Many analysts think Burmese authorities used Yettaw’s visit as an excuse to keep Suu Kyi out of circulation in the run-up to elections, due to be held next year.

“I hope that over time, the government of Myanmar will understand that with the scrutiny of the outside world judging their government very largely on how they are treating Aung San Suu Kyi, that it is to their advantage to allow her to participate in the political process,” Webb said.
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Webb gave little indication of how his suggestions were received by Gen. Than Shwe, who leads the government, and the other generals he met.

Webb’s visit has been controversial. Many observers think it sent the wrong signals to a regime that had only days earlier defied concerted international pressure to release Suu Kyi from detention. But Webb is part of a growing movement that thinks past attempts to isolate the regime have failed and that engagement is the only alternative.

“The problem with international policy towards Burma has been that it’s been all about ’sending the right signal’ — it has all been about symbolism, with very little substance and pragmatic thinking,” said Thant Myint-U, an analyst who is a leading proponent of engagement.

It is a position that resonates with the Obama administration, and Webb’s trip to Burma has significant echoes of the recent visit by former president Bill Clinton to North Korea.

“Jim Webb’s trip hopefully represents a watershed towards a more pragmatic approach that will actually yield results, that will help the Burmese people and be in the U.S. national interest,” Thant said.

© 2009 The Washington Post Company. Don’t repost on Balkingpoints…

There was a good loud uproar from the world over this (see 64forSuu.org), which appears to have had an effect on even the most reclusive and repressive of regimes. The WWW is proving to be quite an effective echo chamber against bad governments, when it manages to channel and focus the objections of ordinary people all over the world.

Now the question of whether Yettaw, the trouble-making swimmer, gets bailed out by Bill Clinton or actually has to do that hard-labor sentence…

Opposition Leader’s Sentence Commuted to 18 Months of House Arrest

By Tim Johnston and Colum Lynch

Tuesday, August 11, 2009 11:46 AM

BANGKOK, Aug. 11 — Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced Tuesday to an additional 18 months under house arrest for breaching the terms of her previous incarceration, a decision that immediately triggered widespread international condemnation.

A court in Rangoon’s notorious Insein Prison initially sentenced Suu Kyi, 64, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, to three years of hard labor on grounds that she illegally harbored an American tourist.

But Burma’s interior minister later read a statement from Gen. Than Shwe, chairman of the ruling junta, commuting the sentence to 18 months under house arrest. The statement said he made the decision partly in light of Suu Kyi’s position as the daughter of Aung San, the father of Burmese independence, and partially in the interests of the future peace and prosperity of the country, according to the diplomat.

John Yettaw, the American who swam across a lake bordering Suu Kyi’s villa and entered her heavily guarded property uninvited, was sentenced to seven years, including four of hard labor.

Two co-defendants in Suu Kyi’s trial — Khin Khin Win and Win Ma Ma, a mother and daughter who have been the democracy activist’s companions and housekeepers for the past five years — also received an initial sentence of three years that was commuted to 18 months of house arrest.

“A ripple of shock went ’round the room,” said one European diplomat who attended the hearing. “We looked at these three slightly built women, one of whom uses a walking aid, and it was beyond belief.”

Suu Kyi’s defense team said it would appeal the verdict.

International officials immediately renounced the verdict. U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon strongly deplored Burma’s actions and the European Union vowed to impose new economic sanctions against individuals responsible for Suu Kyi’s continued imprisonment.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for a U.N. embargo on all arms imports to Burma, and French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged new restrictions on Burma’s export of rubies and hardwood, two key sources of government revenue.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton issued a measured statement, reiterating her call for Suu Kyi’s release and saying that the Nobel Peace Prize laureate “should not have been tried and should not have been convicted.

Clinton, speaking in Goma, Congo, also called for the release of more than 2,000 other political prisoners, including Yettaw.

“We are concerned about the harsh sentence imposed upon him especially in light of his medical condition,” she said at a news conference with Congolese foreign minister, Alexis Thambwe. “The Burmese junta should immediately end its repression of so many in this country, start a dialogue with the opposition and the ethnic groups. Otherwise the elections they have scheduled for next year will have absolutely no legitimacy.”

European leaders said that Tuesday’s judgment was designed to prevent Suu Kyi from participating in the country’s upcoming elections. “This is a purely political sentence designed to prevent her from taking part in the regime’s planned elections next year,” Brown said.

The U.N. Security Council, at the request of France, plans to convene an emergency session to condemn the Burmese verdict. But U.N. diplomats said they doubted that Burma’s closest ally on the council, China, would agree to support any tough action against the country, saying the legal case was a domestic matter.

A draft statement negotiated by the United States, France and Britain expresses “grave concern” over Suu Kyi’s verdict, and calls for her immediate release from prison. It also urges the Burmese government to allow a more inclusive political process leading up to next year’s election.

A European diplomat said that the council’s Western powers are seeking to secure an immediate consensus that today’s verdict is unacceptable, and then to explore whether China is prepared to accept the imposition of more painful economic sanctions at a later date.

Ban, who is on vacation in Seoul, issued a statement this morning saying that he was “deeply disappointed by the verdict.”

“The Secretary-General urges the Government to immediate and unconditionally release Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and to engage with her without delay as an essential partner in the process of national dialogue and reconciliation,” according to the statement, which was issued in New York. “Unless she and all other political prisoners in Myanmar are released and allowed to participate in free and fair elections, the credibility of the political process will remain in doubt.”

Even Malaysia, which was instrumental in bringing Burma into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations 10 years ago, expressed its dismay.

“I think there is a need for ASEAN foreign ministers to have an urgent meeting to discuss this issue, which is of grave concern,” Anifah Aman, the Malaysian foreign minister, told Agence France-Presse.

Suu Kyi was charged in May after Yettaw, an American from Falcon, Mo., swam across Inya Lake, sneaked onto her property and spent the night in her house. Yettaw, a devout Mormon who relatives say suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder from his service during the Vietnam War, told the court he was acting on a vision in which he saw Suu Kyi being assassinated by terrorists.

Suu Kyi said that she allowed Yettaw, a diabetic, to stay only because he was exhausted.

“I acted without malice simply with intent to ensure that the one concerned should not suffer any adverse consequences,” she told the court in her closing statement.

Suu Kyi’s defense had argued that the constitutional measure under which she was charged had been superseded and that government security forces should bear responsibility for allowing Yettaw to breach the cordon that surrounded her home.

The sentence will effectively keep Suu Kyi out of circulation until after the conclusion of elections that are due to be held next year.

“She is not being imprisoned because an American swam to her home but because she is viewed as a strong threat to the legitimacy of this regime and its plans for next year’s elections,” said Jared Genser, a lawyer who represents Suu Kyi overseas.

Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for 14 of the 19 years since her National League for Democracy won a landslide victory in general elections, a result that the ruling generals annulled.

But she remains the regime’s most dangerous opponent: the one figure with the ability to unite the fractious and demoralized opposition within the country.

Authorities mounted a huge security operation outside the prison, with an estimated 2,000 police and government militia manning checkpoints in an attempt to forestall any public demonstrations.

“The people who favor democracy do not want to see riots and protests that can harm their goal,” said the government-run New Light of Myanmar in a commentary on Tuesday.

© 2009 The Washington Post Company. Don’t repost on Balkingpoints…

Last week it announced a delay in issuing a verdict until 11 Aug. That suggests to me a reprieve may be pending, otherwise they just convict Suu Kyi and get it off the radar screen.

Story link from MSNBC

-

Instead, history twisted the necks of the Burman people. Of all the Burmese people.

—

from 64 For Suu
to sixtyfourforsuu@lists.burmacampaign.org.uk
date Fri, Jul 3, 2009 at 9:18 AM

subject [64forSuu] Ban Ki-moon In Burma – Help Us Keep The Pressure Up

Dear Friend,

Today UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon arrived in Burma, as the regime once more delayed Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial. When he arrived Ban Ki-Moon said it was his top priority to secure the release of all of Burma’s political prisoners – this is a breakthrough for us as that’s what we’ve been campaigning for him to do for many months.

We need to ensure that Ban turns words into action. The regime is hoping that by stringing out Aung San Suu Kyi’s trial the world will forget her; we can’t let that happen. We need tens of thousands of people across the world to show that they haven’t forgotten her by demanding that the regime release Suu Kyi and all of Burma’s political prisoners at 64forSuu.org

The global movement calling for the release of Suu Kyi has never been stronger. With over 16,000 messages, and the backing of political leaders, major celebrities such as Julia Roberts, Yoko Ono, Paul McCartney and Bono, 64forSuu.org has demonstrated the scale of global outrage. Over a hundred thousand people support her on Facebook facebook.com/aungsansuukyi, and thousands are supporting her on Twitter (by using the hashtag #ASSK64 Twitter).

TAKE ACTION: LET’S KEEP THE PRESSURE UP
Aung San Suu Kyi is Burma’s most high profile political prisoners but across Burma there are 2,154 other political prisoners enduring appalling conditions inside Burma’s squalid prisons. They face brutal torture, are banned from receiving family visits and denied proper medical care. Please go to 64forSuu.org now and leave a message calling for their release.

With your help we can show that no matter what the regime try the world will never forget Burma’s brave political prisoners.

Thank you,

Johnny Chatterton
Project Manager
64forSuu.org