Burma Junta: No Freedom for Opposition Leader

The Nobel Prize-winning leader of the Burmese opposition will spend another year under house arrest, the country's military government announced today. Hopes that international pressure, along with the national crisis in the wake of Cyclone Nargis, might lead the junta to release Aung San Suu Kyi were dashed by a 10-minute official visit to her Rangoon home this morning.

Suu Kyi won a 1990 election by a landslide, but the junta ignored the result, detaining her for 12 of the past 18 years. Her annually renewed house arrest order had been set to expire at midnight. Family lawyers are incensed; under Burmese law, they argue, no one can be held for more than 5 years without trial.