September 16, 2009
YANGON (AFP) - Myanmar authorities have barred pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from attending court this week to hear the final arguments in her appeal against her house arrest, her party said Wednesday.
The Nobel laureate was convicted on August 11 of breaching security laws after an American swam to her house and sentenced to three years' hard labour. Junta leader Than Shwe reduced the sentence to 18 months house arrest.
The 64-year-old opposition icon appealed against the verdict earlier this month and lawyers for both the military government and her defence are due to make submissions to a court in the commercial hub Yangon on Friday.
"We applied to the police special information branch for her to attend court on Friday because Daw Suu wanted to hear the arguments for her appeal," Nyan Win, the spokesman for her National League for Democracy (NLD), told AFP.
"They refused it saying that it was not their concern. I told them that it was their concern as they detained her, they did not say anything after that," added Nyan Win, who is also one of her main lawyers.
Suu Kyi had not yet been informed that she would be barred from the hearing, he said.
The guilty verdict sparked international outrage and the imposition of further sanctions against Myanmar's powerful generals, who have already kept the frail Suu Kyi locked up for 14 of the past 20 years.
The extension of her house arrest keeps her off the scene for elections promised by the regime some time in 2010, adding to widespread criticism that the polls are a sham designed to legitimise the junta's grip on power.
The NLD won the country's last elections in 1990 but was never allowed to take power by the military, which has ruled the country since 1962.
Nyan Win said the refusal to allow Suu Kyi to attend her own appeal hearing was "not justice", adding: "This is also a sign of how they handle the case in terms of balance and fairness."
Her lawyers have said the appeal would focus on the fact that a 1974 constitution under which she was originally detained had been superseded by a new constitution approved last year.
Her legal team had fully prepared their arguments for Friday, he added.
Eccentric US national John Yettaw was sentenced to seven years' hard labour at the same trial for swimming uninvited to her lakeside house in May, but the regime freed him last month after a visit by US Senator Jim Webb.
Suu Kyi insisted on her innocence during the trial held at Yangon's notorious Insein Prison, saying that she allowed military veteran Yettaw to stay for two nights at her home because he was ill.
The move raised expectations of a possible thaw in the tense relations between Myanmar and the United States, which has reviewed its policies towards the country under the administration of President Barack Obama.
