Myanmar's Suu Kyi hits out over guarded home

MYANMAR: Myanmar pro-democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi is dissatisfied that her lakeside home is still guarded by authorities despite her house arrest officially ending in May, a lawyer said Thursday.

The Nobel laureate, currently held in Yangon's notorious Insein prison, said friends had been denied access to her residence despite the fact that police told her in May that the house arrest had been cancelled.

The 63-year-old is on trial for breaching the terms of her house arrest following a bizarre incident in which a US man swam to the property in May. She faces up to five years in jail if convicted. "She is not very satisfied," said Nyan Win, one of her three lawyers and the spokesman for her National League for Democracy (NLD), after meeting with the opposition leader inside the prison on Wednesday.

"She said that her house arrest ended on May 26, but her friends are not allowed to go into her house for cleaning. Security staff said they are still waiting for permission from their superiors," Nyan Win told AFP. Aung San Suu Kyi has spent 13 of the last 19 years in detention since Myanmar's military junta refused to recognise the NLD's landslide victory in the country's last elections, in 1990.

YANGON, Thursday, AFP