Rev. Danny Fisher

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.