THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's pro-democracy leader, has been reunited with her son who[m] she last saw a decade ago.
In an emotional moment at the Yangon airport, 10 days after her release from detention, Ms Suu Kyi met Kim Aris, 33, who was finally granted a visa by the military regime after waiting for several weeks in neighbouring Thailand.
Just before walking into the airport terminal, the 65-year old Ms Suu Kyi, who was released earlier this month after more than seven years under house arrest, said: "I am very happy."
A smiling Ms Suu Kyi slipped her arm around her son's waist as the two posed briefly for photographers.
Through her lawyer Nyan Win, Ms Suu Kyi thanked the Burmese authorities for issuing the visa to her son, who resides in Britain and last saw his mother in December 2000. He has repeatedly been denied visas ever since by the ruling junta. >>> | Tuesday, November 23, 210
Friday, November 19, 2010
Suu Kyi Wants To Meet Myanmar Junta Leader
THE GLOBE AND MAIL: Myanmar's chief democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi says she wants to meet the leader of the country's military junta to "let him speak first" about the country's political deadlock.
In a telephone interview Friday with The Globe and Mail, Ms. Suu Kyi said she wants to hold talks with Senior General Than Shwe but wouldn't go into them with a list of demands.
"What I want to do is just start talking. I'd like to let him speak first. Dialogue is not just about what you want to say," she said, speaking from Rangoon, the capital of Myanmar.
The interview was the first Ms. Suu Kyi has given to a Canadian newspaper since she was released from house arrest on Saturday.
She said she was "exhausted" at the end of her first week of freedom, which was filled with meetings with her supporters in Myanmar and abroad, phone calls to family members she hasn't seen in years and a visit to a Rangoon home for HIV/AIDS sufferers.
Ms. Suu Kyi, who has been under detention for 14 of the past 20 years, said she has been surprised and impressed with the level of political involvement among the younger generation in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma.
Earlier this week, the 65-year-old Nobel Peace Prize laureate called for a "peaceful revolution" in her country. >>> Mark MacKinnon | Friday, November 19, 2010
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese opposition leader, has been released after seven years in detention.
Ms San Suu Kyi appeared outside her house, waving and smiling. Someone threw her a flower which she put in her hair.
Addressing the jubilant crowd, she told her supporters: "["]There is a time to be quiet and a time to talk. People must work in unison. Only then can we achieve our goal."
She was expected to meet her party leaders inside her home on Saturday. She also invited her supporters to come to her party's headquarters on Sunday to hear her speak.
At least 1,000 people had gathered near her lakeside villa to witness her release.
Many cheered loudly and chanted "Release Aung San Suu Kyi" and "Long live Aung San Suu Kyi", as officials pulled down barbed wire and removed the concrete barricades.
Witnesses said that police were no longer stationed outside the building. >>> | Saturday, November 13, 2010
BIRMANIE : Enfin libre, Aung San Suu Kyi appelle au rassemblement de ses partisans
L'opposante Aung San Suu Kyi a été libérée après plus de sept ans en résidence surveillée. Photo : Le Pont
LE POINT: Aung San Suu Kyi, symbole de la lutte pour la démocratie en Birmanie, a été libérée samedi après plus de sept ans en résidence surveillée, demandant à des milliers de partisans en liesse de travailler "à l'unisson" pour l'avenir du pays. La lauréate du prix Nobel de la paix, considérée par certains comme l'unique solution face à la junte au pouvoir, est apparue souriante aux grilles de sa maison, quelques minutes après avoir pris connaissance de l'ordre de libération la concernant.
Portant dans ses cheveux une fleur lancée depuis la foule, elle a prononcé quelques mots devant des partisans en délire, la plupart de ses paroles étant couvertes par les hurlements et les applaudissements. "Nous devons travailler ensemble, à l'unisson" à l'avenir du pays, a-t-elle déclaré. "Si vous voulez entendre, venez s'il vous plaît demain à midi au bureau" de la Ligue nationale pour la démocratie (LND), son parti dissous avec lequel elle a mené tout son combat depuis son apparition sur la scène politique birmane, en 1988. "Elle est libre maintenant", avait indiqué un responsable birman quelques minutes auparavant, tandis que la police enlevait les barrières menant à la vieille demeure familiale dans laquelle elle a été si longtemps confinée. >>> Source AFP | Samedi 13 Novembre 2010
Aung San Suu Kyi auf freiem Fuss: Burmesische Friedensnobelpreisträgerin zeigt sich ihren Anhängern
NZZ ONLINE: Die birmanische Oppositionsführerin Aung San Suu Kyi kommt auf freien Fuss. Ihr wurde am Samstag die Aufhebung ihres Hausarrest verlesen.
In Burma ist die Oppositionspolitikerin Aung San Suu Kyi aus ihrem Hausarrest entlassen worden. «Sie ist nun frei», sagte ein Regierungsvertreter, der namentlich nicht genannt werden wollte.
Die Friedensnobelpreisträgerin zeigte sich danach ihren Anhängern. Die 65-Jährige erschien in Rangun am Tor ihres Hauses, in dem die sie jahrelang abgeschnitten von der Aussenwelt leben[.] >>> afp | Samstag, 13. November 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
Burma Generals 'Sign Aung San Suu Kyi Release Order'
BBC: Reports are coming out of Burma saying the military authorities have signed an order authorising the release of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
The Nobel laureate has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years, and her house arrest term expires on Saturday.
There has been increased police activity outside her house in Rangoon, but as yet no official confirmation.
However, Ms Suu Kyi is not expected to accept a conditional release if it excludes her from political activity.
She was originally due to be released last year, but a case involving an American who swam across Inya Lake to her home, claiming he was on a mission to save her, prompted the latest 18-month detention.
'Significant impact'
The BBC's Alastair Leithead in Bangkok says a number of sources inside Burma have told the BBC that documents authorising Ms Suu Kyi's release have been signed.
There has been increased police activity outside her home in University Avenue in Rangoon, Burma's biggest city.
Her supporters, who have been publicly counting down the days to the end of her current term of house arrest, have been gathering at the headquarters of her political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), in anticipation of her release. >>> | Friday, November 12, 2010
Suu Kyi Too Hot for Asia's Most Brutal Regime to Handle
THE INDEPENDENT ON SUNDAY: Burma's political heroine has spent 15 of the past 20 years under arrest. Now, as the country goes to the polls, her fate hangs in the balance
She is by some stretch the most abused political heroine alive today. She has been confined to her crumbling family home in Rangoon for more than 15 of the past 20 years. Her two sons, Alex and Kim, have for many years been barred from visiting her – Kim, now 33, is in Bangkok trying to get a visa so he can see his mother for the first time in 10 years. The last wish of her gravely ill husband, Michael Aris – to die in her arms – was brutally snubbed.
But in one week's time all that could be in the past and Aung San Suu Kyi could walk through the rusty iron gates of 54 University Avenue, Rangoon, a free woman again.
Or will she? >>> Peter Popham | Sunday, November 07, 2010
Sunday, August 16, 2009
John Yettaw, American Jailed in Burma, Released to US Officials
THE SUNDAY TIMES: The American man jailed in Yangon for swimming to the house of Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has flown out of Burma after being released to US officials earlier today.
Authorities in Burma handed over jailed American citizen John Yettaw to US embassy officials earlier today, ahead of his departure from the country with US senator Jim Webb.
The US embassy said Mr Yettaw is now headed to Bangkok, Thailand, on a military plane with Senator Webb.
The senator secured his release on Saturday with a plea to Myanmar's ruling junta.
Mr Webb thanked the government for the release of Mr Yettaw at a brief news conference just prior to their departure this morning. Mr Yettaw was sentenced last week to seven years at hard labour for breaking the terms of Ms Suu Kyi's house arrest in early May.
Senator Webb met Myanmar’s top military leader Than Shwe and opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi yesterday, and announced the release of the American who was jailed for visiting the Nobel peace laureate.
Mr Webb, a Democrat who is chairman of a Senate subcommittee on East Asia and Pacific, is the first member of Congress to travel in an official capacity to Myanmar in more than a decade and is also believed to be the first senior American official ever to meet Than Shwe. >>> | Sunday, August 16, 2009
Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Aung San Suu Kyi Found Guilty - Sentence Will Keep Her Out of Election
TIMES ONLINE: The Burmese democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been sentenced to a further 18 months of house arrest for receiving an eccentric American wellwisher in the home where she was being detained.
The court in Rangoon’s Insein Prison sentenced Ms Suu Kyi to three years hard labour, but it was immediately commuted to a year and a half under house arrest by the leader of Burma’s military dictatorship, Senior General Than Shwe. John Yettaw, the American whose late-night swim to her lakeside home led to her trial, received a seven-year sentence with hard labour.
The sentence will take Ms Suu Kyi out of the running for the elections which the Burmese junta has promised to hold next year, and will confirm many of its opponents in their suspicion that the charges against her were politically motivated to eliminate the symbol of the country’s long suppressed democracy movement.
Ms Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won an overwhelming victory in the last election in 1990, a result that was never accepted by the junta.
The verdict had been delayed without explanation for 11 days, and there had been suspicions that it might be postponed again after Mr Yettaw was admitted to hospital last week after suffering epileptic seizures.
According to her lawyers, Ms Suu Kyi had been anticipating a guilty verdict, and had assembled a library of books to see her through a long prison sentence. Burma has more than 2,000 political prisoners and almost all received no more than perfunctory consideration from the courts, which predictably yield to the wishes of the military dictatorship. >>> Richard Lloyd Parry, Asia Editor | Tuesday, August 11, 2009
Suu Kyi: Sarkozy appelle à des sanctions
leJDD.fr: Nicolas Sarkozy condamne le verdict "brutal et injuste", qui touche l'opposante birmane Aung San Suu Kyi, condamné mardi à 18 mois de prison. "Les autorités birmanes confirment par cette décision inique leur choix d'ignorer les messages pressants de la communauté internationale", estime l'Élysée dans un communiqué publié mardi. Le chef de l'Etat appelle l'Union européenne à réagir rapidement "par l'adoption de nouvelles sanctions dirigées contre le régime birman, qui doivent viser tout particulièrement les ressources dont il profite directement dans le domaine de l'exploitation du bois et des rubis", poursuit le texte. [Source: leJDD.fr] Mardi 11 Août 2009
TIMESONLINE: There was a growing international outcry last night about the incarceration of Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese democracy leader, as more details emerged about the incident that led to her transfer to the country’s most notorious jail.
Ms Suu Kyi, winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, faces up to five years in Insein prison, a high-security institution which houses more than 2,000 political prisoners, after an American swam across a lake and sneaked into her house, where she was less than two weeks from completing a sentence of house arrest.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which rarely comments on its laureates, issued a statement saying that her detention in prison was totally unacceptable. Several governments, including Britain, the United States and Singapore, have also condemned Ms Suu Kyi’s treatment.
The wife of John Yettaw, the man who swam to Ms Suu Kyi’s home, said that he had done so once before, last year, but was prevented from seeing the Nobel laureate by her house staff. >>> James Bone | Saturday, May 16, 2009
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Iran Recognized as a Threat to Religious Freedom
MISSION NETWORK NEWS: Iran ― As of January, the U.S. State Department declared eight countries to be seriously violating religious freedoms. According to USA Today, the list includes Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, China, Eritrea, Uzbekistan, Myanmar and Sudan.
The list looks similar to the Open Doors World Watch List for 2009, which lists countries where Christianity is most threatened.
This list also includes North Korea, Saudi Arabia and Iran in its top three for Christian persecutors.
The situation for Iranians is growing particularly disconcerting. The country has strict laws about the fate of those who convert from Islam. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran "has said that he will eliminate Christianity from Iran," says Todd Nettleton of Voice of the Martyrs. "That's a promise that he has made, so he's doing everything in his power to act against the church."
Threats to religious freedom include a provisional law passed last year to make a mandatory death penalty law for any male who converts from Islam. Females found guilty of apostasy can look forward to a life sentence in prison.
This is the current fate of two women who were arrested in March for being "anti government activists;" but the highest criminal behavior these women have been engaged in is following after Jesus Christ. They are now being held in a prison known for its poor treatment of women, and they are both very ill. >>> MNN | Monday, April 13, 2009
