Burma Junta: No Freedom for Opposition Leader

Aung San Suu Kyi detention extended
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted May 27, 2008 8:13 AM CDT
Burma Junta: No Freedom for Opposition Leader
Protesters shout slogans during a rally Tuesday, May 27, 2008, outside the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok, Thailand, demanding the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.   (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit)

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. (More Burma stories.)

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