Burmese Opposition Leader to Face Trial

Kurt Kamrath

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the major opposition party in Myanmar, was charged with violating her house arrest this week when an American tourist entered her home. The man, a sympathizer, avoided the security guards enforcing the house arrest by swimming across a lake to reach Suu Kyi's home. She has been under house arrest for 13 of the last nineteen years when her party, the National League for Democracy, won the nation's last election. Her current term was set to expire in weeks, but if she is found guilty of violating her house arrest, she will face a maximum sentence of five years and will be barred from participating the nation's upcoming election. The UN and most Western countries are condemning the validity of the charges and are concerned about the fairness and transparency of any judicial proceedings, but China, India and Thailand, Myanmar's major trading partners, are not taking a position.