Burmese Democracy Advocate Faces Military Trial

BANGKOK — Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was charged Thursday with violating the terms of her house arrest in a move that could tighten the grip of the military junta over its chief opponent in advance of an election next year.

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Her arrest grew out of a bizarre event in which an American man was reported to have swum across a lake and spent at least one night on the grounds of her home, where she has been confined for 13 of the past 19 years.

She was being held in Insein Prison near Myanmar’s main city, Yangon, pending her trial, which is on the docket for Monday but may not begin immediately, her lawyer said.

The motives of the man, identified as John Yettaw, 53, were unclear. But a lawyer for Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi said the man told her he was a Mormon and prayed extensively while he was in her house. The lawyer, U Kyi Win, described Mr. Yettaw as “a nutty fellow.”

Her arrest came two weeks before the statutory expiration of Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s most recent six-year detention and many analysts saw it as a legal ploy to allow the junta to extend her confinement.

The charge against her carries a sentence of up to five years and raises the possibility that Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, 63, who has been reported to be in fragile health, would be face lengthy incarceration at under much harsher conditions at Insein, where hundreds of other political prisoners are believed to be held.

“To me it is ridiculously obvious that they are trying to put her away from any involvement in the upcoming election,” said Soe Aung, who represents the Bangkok-based Forum for Democracy in Burma, a coalition of exile groups from Myanmar, formerly Burma.

“She is being charged with not behaving as a good detainee,” he said.

Her arrest came as Western nations including the United States were reviewing a confrontational policy of economic sanctions and political exclusion toward the junta, which has jailed its opponents, crushed pro-democracy uprisings and clung to power through force for the past two decades.