Friday, 18 June 2010 12:40 Phanida
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s international legal representative, Jared Genser, in Washington yesterday released a UN working group opinion that declares the continued detention of the Nobel Peace laureate illegal.
Suu Kyi has spent approximately 15 of the last 21 years in jail or under house arrest under laws personally targeting her and her work for democracy in Burma.
Genser told Mizzima said that the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention’s opinion condemning the Nobel Laureate’s continued imprisonment represented “an important step forward” in the struggle to free Suu Kyi.
Rights lawyer Genser is president of Freedom Now, a non-profit group that provides legal support and seeks to free political prisoners worldwide.
He said the working group’s statement meant that the “United Nations has found for a sixth occasion that various terms of Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest are in flagrant violation of international law and she should be released”.
The working group based in Geneva consists of experts from five countries including Russia who work under the discretion of the UN Human Rights Council. The release of its opinion comes just days ahead of Suu Kyi’s 65th birthday on June 19.
Its opinion was that the “continuation of the deprivation of liberty of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is arbitrary, being in contravention of articles 9, 10, 19 and 20 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights”.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights approved in 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly guarantees freedom of opinion and freedom of expression. It also forbids governments from making arbitrary arrests and guarantees a person the right to face trial by an independent court.
The opinion also states, Suu Kyi “was not informed of the reasons for her arrest; had no effective remedy to challenge her detention; no records were given to her; she was never informed of her rights; she has been denied communication with the outside world; and is being detained because of her political views”.
The release was quickly followed on the Thursday by a statement from Tomas Ojea Quintana, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Burma, which called on the regime “to heed the call of an independent United Nations human rights body to immediately release Daw Aung San Suu Kyi”.
Quintana also demanded that the Burmese military regime “release all prisoners of conscience in order to create the conditions for an inclusive election process and to demonstrate that it intends to take a more serious and sincere approach to its international obligations to uphold human rights”.
Burma democracy supporters believe that the opinion of an independent UN working group condemning the regime’s continued detention of the world’s most famous political prisoner will expose the unfair and biased nature of Burma’s upcoming national elections, from which Suu Kyi and all members of her National League for Democracy party have effectively been barred.
Last year Suu Kyi was given an 18-month prison term because John Yettaw, an uninvited American tourist, was caught after swimming to her residence, where he had stayed for two days. Yettaw, whose family in the United States described as mentally unwell, was eventually released following US Senator Jim Webb’s meeting last August with the leader of Burma’s ruling junta, Senior General Than Shwe.
While Suu Kyi remains detained her supporters have launched “worldwide campaigns” in the name of the “People’s Election” and are planting tree saplings in Burma and abroad to mark her birthday.
Phyu Phyu Thin, a key member of Suu Kyi’s party, the NLD, told Mizzima that young members of the party had planted more than 10,000 saplings across the country. He said that 66 saplings had been planted in each township in all of Burma’s states and divisions.
Meanwhile, an exiled alliance of 10 opposition groups held a press conference today at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Thailand in Bangkok to demand the immediate release of Suu Kyi and all of Burma’s more than 2,100 political prisoners. It also called for the regime to immediately begin a dialogue with opposition and ethnic groups.
The alliance concluded their press conference by highlighting the “People’s Election” campaign, being conducted in 14 countries before Suu Kyi’s birthday. In the mock poll, Burmese exiles are given a ballot in which they can freely choose between Suu Kyi, whose NLD party won the 1990 election in a landslide, and junta leader Than Shwe.
Thwin Linn Aung, foreign affairs representative from the 10-member alliance, said that more than 39,000 votes had already been cast during the last two weeks.
Additional reporting by Thomas Maung Shwe
Friday, June 18, 2010
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