In a crumbling shore-side bungalow, the activist Aung San Suu Kyi lived confined for 14 of the past 20 years, a time which was regularly extended by the Myanmar military junta CNN reported. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate rarely received visitors, except from her doctor, special branch police officers and the occasional United Nations envoy. The accusations against her therefore lay in her sheltering of an American man, actions which the military junta said broke her several-years-long house arrest.
Aung San Suu Kyi was the face of the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar according to Newsweek. In 1990, her party won over 80% of the vote, which the junta ignored.
After months of renewed worldwide protest for her release, Suu Kyi finally broke her silence in court earlier this year, stating that she did not violate the terms of her house arrest and just offered to let John William Yettaw, a 53-year-old former military serviceman from Missouri, “stay temporarily,” according to CNN. Further, she told the court that she did not immediately know of Yettaw’s appearance on May 3, as he snuck in undetected. “I didn’t know,” she said. “I was upstairs.” Two days later on May 5, “he walked out to the lakeside. But I didn’t know which way he went, because it was very dark,” Suu Kyi said. She later confirmed that she told no one of his stay, fearing for his safety. The Myanmar military junta used this to back their case.
“As Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of General Aung San, the leader of our country,” Police Brigadier General Myint Thein stated to journalists, “we were deeply thinking whether to extend her detention or not. Unfortunately, a U.S. citizen entered her house for two days. She allowed and made conversation with him, gave him food. These kind of actions broke the law. This is why we have no way but to open a case. And we are very sad about this case.”
Suu Kyi’s lawyers deemed the junta’s claim false, saying that the U.N. declared her prolonged detainment illegal under Myanmar’s own state protection laws. “They are out of time, and they cannot detain her any longer under their own law,” Jared Genser, her U.S.-based lawyer, told CNN.
According to Reuters, the military government claimed that it would reintroduce democracy to Myanmar through a referendum, followed by elections for which critics claim the junta used the recent prosecution to keep Suu Kyi out of. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the charges “baseless” and accused the junta of “continuing resistance to a free and open electoral process.” The European Union released a statement on their website saying that allegations “have been in breach of national and international law” and that “the EU urges the authorities to immediately and unconditionally release her." Additionally, nine Nobel laureates across the world displayed discontent over Suu Kyi’s prosecution, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who, according to Voice of America (VOA), called accusations “a sham trial, a total travesty of justice.”
The Myanmar court sentenced Suu Kyi to 3 years of hard labor, but reduced the sentence to 18 more months of house arrest. John Yettaw, who was under trial for violating immigration laws and trespassing, was sentenced to 7 years hard labor but was released for diplomatic reasons. In a telephone interview from his Missouri home, he said, “I want to free Myanmar. I want to stop the suffering there. I am antijunta. I will never be at peace, emotionally or psychologically, until that woman is free, until that nation is free.”
Her legal team has filed for her appeal.