Checkpoints, Barricades Removed from in Front of Suu Kyi’s Home

By MIN LWIN

Checkpoints and barricades were removed on Sunday from outside the Rangoon lakeside home of detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Two leading members of her National League for Democracy (NLD), Spokesman Nyan Win and Central Executive Committee member Khin Maung Swe, both confirmed that the road in front of Suu Kyi’s house had been cleared of security checkpoints and barricades and was now open to normal traffic.

Political observers in Rangoon saw no significance in the development. A veteran journalist told The Irrawaddy the regime was “just playing” and misleading the international community with “disinformation.”

“The junta can release Suu Kyi within minutes, they don’t need to remove barricades first of all,” he said.

The NLD’s Khin Maung Swe, who was released from Lashio prison in September after serving a long term of imprisonment, made an appeal for Suu Kyi’s release. “Aung San Suu Kyi must be released from house arrest, if the junta want to solve Burmese politics,” he said.

The new constitution and the general election planned for 2010 offered no solution and couldn’t work in the long term, he said.

The NLD said no response had yet been received to the handing in of an appeal against Suu Kyi’s latest term of house arrest. Her legal representative presented the appeal to the military government in Naypyidaw on October 8.

The 63-year-old Nobel peace laureate has spent more than 13 years of the past 19 years confined to her Rangoon home. Suu Kyi’s current period of house arrest began in 2003 after she and her supporters were attacked by government backed thugs in upper Burma.

NLD lawyers say the extension last May of her house arrest conflicts with article 10 (b) of the Burmese State Protection Law 1975, which stipulates that a person judged to be a threat to the sovereignty and security of the State and the peace of the people can only be detained for up to five years.

Asian and European leaders attending an Asia-Europe meeting in Beijing on Saturday called on the Burmese government to release political prisoners, lift restrictions on political parties and engage all sides in an inclusive political process.