World

Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi Illegally Detained, UN Says

by Jarrett Martineau | March 23, 2009 at 08:01 pm

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Aung San Suu Kyi, the renowned pro-democracy leader in Myanmar who has been held under house arrest for the past 13 years, is being detained illegally a U.N. ruling revealed Monday.

The working group that made the claim is a branch of the United Nations Human Rights Council.

In their statement, released Monday, the group indicates that Suu Kyi is being held under Myanmar's outdated 1975 State Protection Law "which only allows renewable arrest orders for a maximum of five years."

By this assessment, the five-year period in Suu Kyi's case would have ended in May 2008.

Myanmar's ruling junta has maintained that Suu Kyi is a threat to the "security of the State or public peace and tranquility" — a claim based on the outmoded 1975 law which this recent U.N. ruling explicitly refutes.

The United Nations has ruled the continued detention of Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi violates the country's own laws as well as those of the international community, a legal document says.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has spent 13 of the last 19 years under house arrest, with the ruling junta yearly extending her detention despite international outcries.

"The latest renewal (2008) of the order to place Ms. Suu Kyi under house arrest not solely violates international law but also national domestic laws of Myanmar," said a legal opinion by the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detentions that has been sent to the Myanmar government.

Although the ruling is unlikely to spring Suu Kyi from detention, it is uncommon for the world body to accuse a member country of violating its own laws, and while the junta has always marched to its own tune it has also resented being regarded as an international pariah.