Aung San Suu Kyi

In August 2009 Aung San Suu Kyi was sentenced to an additional 18 months of house arrest for allowing an American to stay at her residence.

Aung San Suu Kyi, emblematic figure of the National League for Democracy (NLD), daughter of the leader of Burma’s liberation who was assassinated in 1947 by his rivals, is the most fervent opponent of the Burmese junta. Since the 1990 elections, when she should have become Prime Minister (elections that were finally canceled by the ruling powers), she has been deprived of her freedom for 13 years.  Now that she has been sentenced again, she will be excluded from the political landscape for the elections the junta intends to organize in 2010. The trial took place in camera in a prison  north of Rangoon, just a few days before the expiry of her house arrest, on May 27, 2009. On the opening of her trial, nine Nobel Prize winners and numerous personalities such as Jane Birkin offered her their support. On Monday May 16, 2009, when a demonstration was taking place in Paris, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, in an “open letter to the Burmese government”, demanded the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. “We now know that Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Prize winner, risks being sentenced to a new prison term that, in view of her state of health, would be life-threatening. (…) Above and beyond the political situation in Burma, I would like to take advantage of my position, and the resonance that this letter may have to act as spokesperson for all those who, in my country, find this woman’s fate intolerable.” Since May 7, 2009, Aung San Suu Kyi and her personal physician have been in prison for reasons that the Burmese authorities have not explained.