The Burmese junta is being urged to free pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi when her current term of house arrest expires on May 25.
Two US lawyers speaking for the human rights organization Freedom Now said in Washington DC on Friday that Burmese law required her release from midnight on May 24.
Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), agreed. NLD spokesman Nyan Win said the government would be acting illegally if it continued to detain her under house arrest. “Under the law, she should not be detained any longer,” he said.
Two US lawyers speaking for the human rights organization Freedom Now said in Washington DC on Friday that Burmese law required her release from midnight on May 24.
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Two lawyers speaking for Freedom Now said in a statement: “Under Burmese law, she must be released from house arrest in Rangoon at midnight, the beginning of Sunday May 25, 2008.”
One of the lawyers, Jared Genser, president of Freedom Now, said if Suu Kyi were released she could then attend the international aid pledging conference in Rangoon on May 25.
The May 25 conference will be attended by international donors, representatives of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Asean and the UN to discuss aid for the cyclone victims.
Freedom Now is a non-profit, non-partisan organization that works to free prisoners of conscience worldwide through legal, political, and public relations advocacy efforts. It also works closely with human rights organizations and lawyers.
Genser said if junta leader Snr-Gen Than Shwe refused to free Su Kyi it would be “a slap in the face to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and the Asean diplomats who will be on hand to hear the junta’s request for $11 billion of international assistance.”
The Freedom Now statement, also signed by lawyer Meghan Barron, pointed out that under Article 10 (b) of Burma’s State Protection Law 1975, a person who is deemed a “threat to the sovereignty and security of the State and the peace of the people” may be detained for up to five years through a restrictive order, renewable one year at a time.
Initially detained after the Depayin massacre in May 2003, Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest was last extended on May 25, 2007. Thus, her fifth and final year of house arrest allowable under Burmese law will expire at the end of the day on May 24, 2008.
Aung San Suu Kyi has spent more than 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest after her party won the 1990 state parliamentary election in Burma with more than 80 percent of the votes cast. She has been confined to her home continuously since May 2003.
