SUU KYI
YANGON (AP):
Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi remained under house arrest following yesterday's expiration of a previous detention order, with police paying her a brief visit and government security around her home tightened.
Officials from the country's secretive military regime could not be reached to confirm the action, and a spokesman for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party was only willing to say that he had no news of a change in her status.
Spokesman U Lwin said he had not received any news of the order, nor had he heard from Suu Kyi, who is under virtual solitary confinement at her residence in the Myanmar capital, allowed no outside visitors and no telephone contact.
U Lwin, who himself has been under house arrest three times in the past, noted that yesterday was the day when a previous one-year detention order would expire.
"According to the procedure, if there is an extension, today would be the day," he said.
"The whole world has been calling for release of Suu Kyi, but the government has not been responding to any of the calls," said U Lwin, referring to appeals from world leaders for the release of the Nobel peace laureate.
Suu Kyi has spent 10 of the past 16 years in detention, mostly under house arrest. She was last taken into custody on May 30, 2003, after her motorcade was attacked by a pro-junta mob as she was making a political tour of northern Myanmar, formerly called Burma. She was held first by the military, and later transferred to house arrest after undergoing an operation at a hospital in Yangon.
