Thaindian News

London, Aug 11 (IANS) British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he is angered by the sentence of 18 months’ house arrest passed against Myanmar opposition leader and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi by the country’s military rulers Tuesday.
Brown said he was “saddened and angry” by the conviction.

He said the sentence was “further proof that the military regime in Myanmar is determined to act with total disregard for accepted standards of the rule of law and in defiance of international opinion.

“This is a purely political sentence designed to prevent her from taking part in the regime’s planned elections next year,” Brown said.

He said as long as the opposition leader and other detained opponents were prevented from taking part in the political process, the elections “will have no credibility or legitimacy”.

“The facade of her prosecution is made more monstrous because its real objective is to sever her bond with the people for whom she is a beacon of hope and resistance.”

Irene Khan, the head of human rights group Amnesty International, said the military regime’s act of reducing a jail sentence to house arrest must not be seen as a gesture of leniency.

“The Myanmar authorities will hope that a sentence that is shorter than the maximum will be seen by the international community as an act of leniency. But it is not, and must not be seen as such, especially by ASEAN or the UN,” said Khan.

“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been detained for over 13 of the past 20 years but should never have been arrested in the first place. The only issue here is her immediate and unconditional release,” said Khan.

“Her arrest and trial and now this guilty verdict are nothing more than legal and political theatre.”

Amnesty International also noted that Suu Kyi is one of more than 2,150 political prisoners in Myanmar.

The human rights group said the verdict comes in the midst of ongoing human rights violations by the military against ethnic minority civilians.

In early June, the Myanmar army staged attacks and took Karen civilians for forced labour in Kayin State, resulting in over 3,500 refugees fleeing to Thailand.