Suu Kyi Could Be Freed After the General Elections in Myanmar
In an attempt to deflect criticism over the polls that are about to be held on November 7 the Myanmar military regime announced that the dissident Aung San Suu Kyi could be freed of house arrest after the vote.
The announcement was made by Nyan Win, Myanmar Foreign Minister, at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit held in Hanoi, Vietnam.
This promise was made by a regime that kept Suu Kyi 15 years under arrest, out of the last two decades when the military dictatorship was established in this country.
The elections scheduled for November were the first in twenty years, and the Myanmar officials wanted to make believe they were going to allow a free vote. The international community however expressed skepticism over the prospect of free elections as long as Suu Kyi was kept in prison and was denied the right to participate in these elections.
American U.S. State Department Philip Crowley said that the Myanmar leaders are attempting a craven manipulation and that it is convenient for them to release her after the elections.
State Secretary Hillary Clinton called for a documentation of the human rights violation in Myanmar, which is the most serious support to the idea that the human rights activists had been advocating for long.
The Philippine Foreign Minister said that he thought it was possible that the military leaders of Myanmar might release her only to have an opportunity to file new complaints against her and throw her behind bars again.
The Indonesian Foreign Minister said that the neighboring country is preparing to release Suu Kyi on November 13,
when her house arrest term expires.
The U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon joined the group of Western democracy who demanded the release of the dissident and of all dissidents in Myanmar in order for the elections to be thought as democratic.
Suu Kyi, revered among the Myanmar people as “the Lady,” humiliated the junta regime when her party, National League for Democracy, won the 1990 polls, which were not acknowledged by the regime.
Ever since, her house arrest was prolonged continuously. Last year she was imprisoned after an incident involving an American swimming to her lakeside house.
For that she was first convicted to three years in prison, and then commuted the sentence to house arrest by the junta leader Than Shwe.
Amnesty International reports that in spite of promises to hold free, fair and inclusive elections, Myanmar junta contributed to the worsening of the human rights observance.11
