Myanmar dismisses criticism of Suu Kyi detention

Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest was extended on Saturday. Picture / Reuters.

PUTRAJAYA, Malaysia - Military-ruled Myanmar has shrugged off international criticism of its decision to extend the house arrest of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, calling it a domestic issue.

"This is not an international issue. This is a domestic issue," Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win told reporters on Monday, on the sidelines of a Non-Aligned Movement meeting in Malaysia.

On Saturday, Myanmar imposed another year of house arrest on Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi despite international pressure for her release.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had made a direct appeal to junta supremo Than Shwe to free her.

Malaysia, which chairs Southeast Asia's regional grouping Asean, voiced surprise and disappointment at the renewed detention order against Ms Suu Kyi, who has spent more than 10 of the past 16 years behind bars or under house arrest.

Myanmar's neighbour Thailand also expressed disappointment.

Mr Nyan Win declined to explain why the 60-year-old democracy campaigner had not been released, saying only: "You already know it has been extended. The government has already announced it."

He also doubted he would have time for separate talks with his Malaysian counterpart, his host for the NAM meeting, or the Thai foreign minister. "The programme is tight," he said.

"We got no time to meet bilaterally. But I will meet ministers from some other countries." He did not name them.

Myanmar is isolated from the West and increasingly estranged from its fellow members of Asean (the Association of South East Asian Nations), which it joined in 1997.

Its neighbours had hoped engagement would be the best way to encourage democracy in Myanmar but they have instead grown frustrated at a lack of reform and have begun to join the West in making explicit calls for Ms Suu Kyi to be released.

In 1990, her National League for Democracy humiliated the junta at the ballot box, winning 392 of 485 parliamentary seats, but the military, which has run Myanmar under one form or another since 1962, refused to accept the result and cede power.

Since 2003, Suu Kyi has been held virtually incommunicado with her telephone line cut and all visitors, apart from her housemaid and doctor, barred.

Her supporters had hoped she would be freed on Saturday when her detention order was due to lapse, especially after the junta had allowed a senior UN official to visit her the week before. It was her first contact with an outsider in three years.

- REUTERS