Nations demanding release of Suu Kyi

By Rafael D. Frankel, Special to the Tribune. Tribune news services contributed to this report
Published July 30, 2003

BANGKOK -- Two months after a crackdown on democracy groups in Myanmar, the military junta finds itself besieged by growing demands from governments around the world to release democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and hundreds of her followers.

Yet rather than showing signs of flexibility, the military is taking an indignant stance, analysts said, and ratcheting up the rhetoric against the National League for Democracy, which is headed by Suu Kyi.

The 58-year-old Nobel Peace laureate, who has spent much of the past 13 years under house arrest, has been held incommunicado by the junta since May 30 when she and hundreds of her supporters were arrested after a rally in northern Myanmar. The junta originally said Suu Kyi was being held "temporarily" in "protective custody."

Red Cross officials visited the pro-democracy leader Monday for the first time since she was detained. Michel Ducreaux, the agency's Myanmar representative, told Reuters on Tuesday that she was in good health and in "high spirits." He did not disclose where she is being held.

Condemnation of the junta for Suu Kyi's detention has come from around the world.

President Bush on Monday signed into law economic sanctions against Myanmar that had been quickly approved by Congress. The sanctions impose a ban on imports from Myanmar, freeze assets of the military government, expand a ban on granting U.S. visas to Myanmar officials and bar virtually all remittances to the country.

Myanmar, formerly Burma, exported about $356 million in products to the United States in 2002, mostly garments.

The European Union has taken similar steps, and Japan, the largest economic donor to Myanmar, has cut off all of its funding.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad recently warned that Myanmar could be expelled from the 10-member group of Southeast Asian nations, which previously had a strict policy of non-interference in each other's domestic affairs.

There is "a lot of coordination between certain governments that think the same way" to put pressure on the junta, a Western diplomat said in Yangon, Myanmar's capital. "And there is a lot of effort by the U.S. to influence many governments to adopt similar positions."

But with each criticism from the international community, the junta has intensified its attacks on Suu Kyi and the league.

©2003 The Chicago Tribune