Suu Kyi goes on trial in prison

MYANMAR: Myanmar opposition icon Aung San Suu Kyi went on trial amid tight security at a notorious prison Monday, facing another five years in detention on charges of harbouring a US man who swam to her home.

Dozens of supporters of the ailing Nobel Peace Prize laureate gathered near Insein prison for the hearing, as riot police set up barbed wire barricades and blocked all roads to the compound near Yangon, witnesses said.

Myanmar’s junta has ignored a storm of international protest to push ahead with charges that the 63-year-old violated the terms of her house arrest, under which she could also be barred from standing in elections due next year.

“The trial has started,” a Myanmar official told AFP on condition of anonymity, without giving any more details about the hearing which is being held behind closed doors.

Security forces barred the ambassadors of Britain, France, Germany and Italy from the jail as they attempted to gain entry to the trial, a western diplomat said.

US national John Yettaw is also on trial over the incident earlier this month in which he used a pair of home-made flippers to swim across a lake to the residence where Aung San Suu Kyi is kept in virtual isolation.

A US embassy car entered the prison compound but a spokesman for the US embassy in Yangon was not immediately able to confirm whether Yettaw was receiving consular assistance.

The trial of Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the last 19 years in detention, comes just days after she was imprisoned at a “guest house” inside the Insein prison compound on charges of breaching security laws.

“Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has studied the section of the law under which she was charged and says that she didn’t commit any crime,” lawyer Kyi Win told AFP. Daw is a term of respect in the Burmese language.

Yangon, Monday, AFP