Rev. Danny Fisher

Image via the BBC.
Of course, today’s big news was that Prime Minister-elect and Nobel Peace laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s house arrest was extended, but there’s more:

“More than 1,000 Myanmar nationals and Japanese supporters marched here Saturday on the 21st anniversary of a failed bloody uprising against the ruling junta.” Image via the Agence France-Presse.
This from the White House:

For Immediate Release: August 11, 2009

The conviction and sentencing of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi today on charges related to an uninvited intrusion into her home violate universal principles of human rights, run counter to Burma’s commitments under the ASEAN charter, and demonstrate continued disregard for UN Security Council statements. I join the international community in calling for Aung San Suu Kyi’s immediate unconditional release.

Today’s unjust decision reminds us of the thousands of other political prisoners in Burma who, like Aung San Suu Kyi, have been denied their liberty because of their pursuit of a government that respects the will, rights, and aspirations of all Burmese citizens. They, too, should be freed. Suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. I call on the Burmese regime to heed the views of its own people and the international community and to work towards genuine national reconciliation.

I am also concerned by the sentencing of American citizen John Yettaw to seven years in prison, a punishment out of proportion with his actions.

[- U.S. President Barack Hussein Obama]

The BBC reports that Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s Prime Minister-elect and Nobel Peace laureate who has spent 14 of the last 20 years under house arrest by the ruling military junta, was found guilty in her sham military trial for violating the terms of that house arrest.

A court in Rangoon convicted her of breaking the terms of her house arrest when she allowed an American man, John Yettaw, to stay at her lakeside home after he swam there uninvited in May.

Ms Suu Kyi, who had denied the charge, was sentenced to an additional three years house arrest but this was commuted to eighteen months by the military government.

Yettaw, the Associated Press reports, was sentenced to seven years of hard labor.

The BBC reports on the anger that has greeted the verdict.

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon has said he “strongly deplores” the verdict, and has called for Ms Suu Kyi’s immediate and unconditional release.

“Unless she and all other political prisoners in Myanmar [Burma] are released and allowed to participate in free and fair elections, the credibility of the political process will remain in doubt,” he said.

A spokesman for the European Union, Ton van Lierop, said the further detention of the 64-year-old was unjustified and unacceptable.

“Keeping Aung San Suu Kyi under arrest under fabricated reasons violates her fundamental freedoms, and does not serve the proclaimed national interest either,” he told the BBC.

UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was “saddened and angry” by the verdict in what he called a “sham” trial.

In a strongly-worded statement, he condemned the “purely political sentence”.

A statement from the office of Nicolas Sarkozy said the French president was calling on the European Union to impose new sanctions on Burma.

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Aung San Suu Kyi should not have been tried or convicted. She also called for the release of Mr Yettaw and “more than 2,000 political prisoners”.

“The Burmese junta should immediately end its repression of so many in this country, start a dialogue with the opposition and the ethnic groups.

“Otherwise the elections they have scheduled for next year will have absolutely no legitimacy,” she said.

The Irrawaddy reports that some 50 people were arrested outside Insein Prison in Burma when the verdict was announced.

Mizzima reports that Amnesty International has called Suu Kyi’s sentence “unacceptable.” The U.S. Campaign for Burma also issued an official statement, calling for “concrete” action in response to the verdict.

Fourteen of Suu Kyi’s fellow Nobel laureates have also written an open letter to the members of the U.N. Security Council.

Václav Havel and U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell also issued individual statements.

The AP further reports that “international pressure built Tuesday for U.N. action to win democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s release, hours after a Myanmar court extended her house arrest for 18 months.”

To add to that international pressure, Avaaz.org invites you to sign their petition to the U.K. and U.S. governments and the United Nations Security Council:

We call on you to condemn the cruel conviction of Aung San Suu Kyi to another year and a half in detention and to immediately take steps at the United Nations Security Council to create a Commission of Inquiry to investigate and hold the Burmese regime to account for crimes against humanity.

Sign the petition here.

This from Amnesty International:

300,000 people displaced by the fighting in Sri Lanka are held by the government in de facto detention camps. They cannot leave the camps, where conditions are “appalling” according to UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon.

Call on the Sri Lankan government to immediately allow the displaced civilians freedom of movement: those who wish to leave the camps should be free to do so. Urge them to place the camps under civilian, not military, management and to allow aid agencies, journalists and human rights observers full, unhindered access to the camps to carry out their functions and prevent possible abuses.

Send a message to Basil Rajapaksa, Senior Advisor to the President of Sri Lanka, here.

“KILLING: A man, still holding his weapon, lies on the ground after being shot dead in a jungle in Yala.” Image via the Bangkok Post.
Our friend and past interviewee Erick D. White forwards us an opinion piece in the Bangkok Post about the violence in Thailand’s deep south. The author, Marc Askew, Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Conflict Studies and Cultural Diversity at Prince of Songkla University, Pattani, argues that “the violence currently afflicting the border provinces is multi-faceted and not solely a product of insurgents’ goals to achieve a separate state.” Take a look.