transcript

Aung San Suu Kyi profile

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LISA MULLINS: I'm Lisa Mullins and this is The World a co-production of the BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH in Boston. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton today demanded that authorities in Myanmar or Burma immediately release Aung San Suu Kyi. Aung San Suu Kyi is the Burmese pro-Democracy leader who has spent years under house arrest. Today, the government of Myanmar charged her with breaking the terms of her punishment. She could face up to five years in jail if she's convicted. These charges stem from a rather strange incident that happened last week. That's when an American man was arrested after swimming across a lake to Aung San Suu Kyi's house and then staying there for two days. The BBC's Jonathan Head is following this story from Bangkok. He says Aung San Suu Kyi is no longer being held at her lakeside home.

JONATHAN HEAD: She's in the notorious Insane Prison, appropriately named. Dissidents say this is the high security prison in the northern part of Rangoon, the main city, also called Yangon, where high level dissidents are frequently jailed. They're also put on trial inside the prison walls, and that is what is going to happen to Aung San Suu Kyi. Within a few days, she will go on trial on charges of violating the terms of her house arrest and could face up to five years in jail. And she's there with the two female companions, aids who've lived with her in her six years of isolation under house arrest who also face the same charges.

MULLINS: So, what happened to prompt these charges?

HEAD: Well, the authorities appear to be using this strange incident where this American man apparently swam across the lake backing onto her house and was allowed, according to her lawyer, against her wishes to stay for two nights. He apparently claimed he was exhausted, but they're using that, the fact that he stayed those two nights to charge her.

MULLINS: So if she goes to trial, if she is convicted, she would be in prison for a period that would include the 2010 elections, and she is seen – and being an opposition leader – she is seen still as a threat to the government there?

HEAD: That's absolutely the point I think, Lisa. Everybody before this incident happened who's been watching Burma expected that they would find some way or some pretext to keep her in detention. Last year, her length of house arrest should have expired and they found an excuse to extend it. The fact is that General Feng Shui, he's the secretive military general who leads this council that has ruled Burma now for something like half a century, fears Aung San Suu Kyi because of her charisma and General Feng Shui sees this as giving his rule which is why he's condemned around the world, a veneer of electoral legitimacy. Aung San Suu Kyi - if she were freed - could threaten that.

MULLINS: And she's been under house arrest for two decades now. She's 63 years old. What do you know about her health?

HEAD: We know it's fragile. She was sick only last week. In fact, a doctor was arrested, I think, in relation to this incident with the American man, but another doctor was able to visit her and found her dehydrated, suffering from low blood pressure, unable to eat. We've seen those problems before. At the same time, she seems to have managed to withstand very harsh conditions. The last six years in complete isolation, and it's hard to imagine what her life is like there in that house on the lake in Rangoon where nobody is allowed to visit her apart from occasionally her doctor. And yet, somehow her spirit has held up.

MULLINS: All right, Jonathan, thank you. The BBC Southeast Asia Correspondent Jonathan Head. Thanks.

HEAD: Thank you, Lisa.

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