Aung San Suu Kyi found guilty - sentence will keep her out of election

The Burmese democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been effectively ruled out of next year's elections after being sentenced today to a further 18 months of house arrest.

The court in Rangoon’s Insein prison sentenced Ms Suu Kyi to three years hard labour for receiving an eccentric wellwisher in the lakeside home where she has been detained for most of the past 20 years.

The sentence was immediately commuted to a year and a half by the leader of Burma’s military dictatorship, Senior General Than Shwe, who said that she could serve it at home. John Yettaw, the American whose late-night swim to her home led to her trial, received a seven-year jail sentence with hard labour.

The verdict and sentence prompted international outrage. In a strongly worded statement released by Downing Street, Gordon Brown dismissed the trial as a "monstrous" sham and promised to push for a total arms embargo on the Burmese regime.

"This is a purely political sentence designed to prevent her from taking part in the regime’s planned elections next year," the Prime Minister added.

"So long as Aung San Suu Kyi and all those political opponents imprisoned in Burma remain in detention and are prevented from playing their full part in the political process, the planned elections in 2010 will have no credibility or legitimacy."

Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won an overwhelming victory in the last election in 1990, a result that was never accepted by the junta.

The verdict had been delayed without explanation for 11 days, and there had been suspicions that it might be postponed again after Mr Yettaw was admitted to hospital last week after suffering epileptic seizures.

According to her lawyers, Ms Suu Kyi had been anticipating a guilty verdict, and had assembled a library of books to see her through a long prison sentence. Burma has more than 2,000 political prisoners and almost all received no more than perfunctory consideration from the courts, which predictably yield to the wishes of the military dictatorship.

The relative mildness of the penalty, which returns her to the situation she was in before Mr Yettaw’s visit, may reflect hesitation on the part of the government, which has been the object of intense international criticism since Ms Suu Kyi’s arrest in May.

Even Burma’s southeast Asian neighbours, who make a point of avoiding comment on internal affairs, have criticised the junta, and the reaction from Europe and the United States has been one of indignant fury.

The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki Moon, visited the junta’s isolated capital, Naypyidaw, last month and asked for the release of Ms Suu Kyi. General Than Shwe refused even to let him meet her.

Ms Suu Kyi and two of her companions have been on trial since May for giving shelter to Mr Yettaw, who swam uninvited to her lakeside home in central Rangoon. She gave him food and allowed him to stay overnight after he complained of exhaustion – the prosecutors argue that this violated the rules of the house arrest under which Ms Suu Kyi has been confined for almost 14 of the past 20 years.

Her lawyers argue that she failed to hand him over to the authorities to avoid bringing trouble to him and to the police who were supposed to have been guarding her house. They also claim that the law under which she has been charged is invalid because it was part of Burma’s 1974 Constitution which was renounced by the ruling junta in 1988.

Mr Yettaw was convicted of abetting Ms Suu Kyi’s offence, of violating his visa status and of swimming in an unauthorised area.

A Foreign Office minister, Ivan Lewis, said that Britain would use its presidency of the UN Security Council to push for firm international action including a total arms embargo on Burma, which is also known as Myanmar.

The European Union also vowed to tighten up sanctions on the junta. "The EU will respond with additional targeted measures against those responsible for the verdict," the EU's Swedish presidency said in a statement on behalf of the 27-nation bloc.

"In addition, the EU will further reinforce its restrictive measures targeting the regime of Burma/Myanmar, including its economic interests."

The call for tighter sanctions was backed by President Sarkozy of France which said that the EU should focus on those resources which most directly target the military regime — wood and ruby mining.

(Published by Times Online - August 11, 2009)