Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi and her US co-defendant are to appeal against their convictions, lawyers said yesterday as the ruling junta faced a global wave of anger over her extended detention.
US President Barack Obama led worldwide outrage at the military regime’s decision on Tuesday to give Suu Kyi another 18 months of house arrest, a verdict that shuts the Nobel peace laureate out of elections next year.
The UN Security Council broke up an emergency meeting with no condemnation of Myanmar and China urged respect for the country’s sovereignty, but Myanmar’s Southeast Asian neighbors issued a rare expression of disappointment.
PHOTO: AFP
In Yangon, Suu Kyi’s lawyer Nyan Win said her legal team would appeal because they were “not satisfied” with the judgment, which stemmed from a stunt in which an American, John Yettaw, swam to her lakeside house in May.
A prison court sentenced her to three years of hard labor after finding her guilty of breaching the terms of her incarceration, but junta strongman Than Shwe commuted the punishment to a year and a half under house arrest.
“We assume that the judgment is totally wrong according to the law,” Nyan Win said, adding that he had received approval from Suu Kyi to proceed if they received a copy of the judgment.
Police and security forces blocked off the road outside her house yesterday.
Lawyers for Yettaw, who was sentenced to seven years of hard labor and imprisonment, would appeal “step by step” to the Myanmar court system and, if necessary, urge Than Shwe to deport him, lawyer Khin Maung Oo said.
He said Yettaw was “very calm” and “hopes for the best.”
In related news, Indonesia said yesterday it had shut down a meeting of exiled Myanmar opposition groups in a move that the activists blamed on pressure from the military junta in Yangon.
The self-proclaimed government-in-exile and six pro-democracy alliances were due to hold two days of talks in Jakarta to spearhead a democracy transition plan for the military-ruled country.
Organizers said their meeting had been curtailed because of “restrictions by police” and intervention from Yangon.
“Regional politics or ASEAN internal politics [are] as usual taking place ... We are very disappointed,” Bo Hla Tint, foreign affairs minister for the exiled National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma, said in an e-mail.
Foreign ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah confirmed that Jakarta had disallowed the meeting despite being aware of “international disappointment” over the situation in Myanmar.
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