BREAKING NEWS: Daw Aung San Suu Kyi Charged, Will Stand for Military Trial

by Danny Fisher

Here’s what’s happening right now with regards to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace laureate who has spent years under house arrest after being democratically elected as Burma’s Prime Minister:

  • The Washington Post and The New York Times have full reports on what’s going on. Here’s the bit from the Post:

      Burma’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning democracy advocate Aung San Suu Kyi was taken Thursday to Rangoon’s notorious Insein Prison, where she is expected to be tried on charges connected with an American man’s intrusion into the bungalow where she has been under house arrest for six years.

      Last week, military authorities said they had arrested a U.S. man, identified as John W. Yettaw, who had swum across Rangoon’s picturesque Lake Inya to reach Suu Kyi’s dilapidated lakefront bungalow and allegedly had stayed there overnight.

      The authorities said that Yettaw was arrested as he swam away from the compound and that he was carrying his passport, some currency, a flashlight, a pair of pliers and a camera.

  • U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says she is “deeply troubled” by the news, and has called for Suu Kyi’s immediate release.
  • Amnesty International issued a press release saying that the U.N. Security Council should call for her immediate release as well.
  • U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, through his spokesperson, said he was”gravely concerned about the news that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been moved to the Insein Prison to face criminal charges…[She] is an essential partner for dialogue in Myanmar’s national reconciliation and [I call] on the government not to take any further action that could undermine this important process.”
  • The BBC profiles Yettaw, and the Agence France-Presse and the Associated Press report on him as well.