U.S. condemns denial of medical attention to Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi: U.S. Citizen arrested in her compound

Daya Gamage – US National Correspondent Asian Tribune

Washington, D.C. 12 May (Asiantribune.com): The United Aung San Suu KyiStated Government expressed deep concern about reports reaching here from Myanmar (Burma) that Pro-Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, 19 years under house arrest by military junta, has been prevented from receiving immediate medical care from her personal physician.

It was disclosed that her personal physician himself has been detained by the military regime denying him to attend to Suu Kyi.
Tin Myo Win has been detained since last week on unspecified charges and the physician's assistant, Pyone Moe Ei, was refused access over the weekend.

The 63-year-old Nobel laureate was placed on an intravenous drip at her house on Friday because she cannot eat, has low blood pressure and is dehydrated.

The pro-democracy icon has spent most of the past 19 years in virtual isolation at her lakeside home in Yangon (Rangoon), where she lives with two maids and has received visits only from her doctor, doctor's assistant and lawyer.
At the U.S. State Department daily briefing in Washington Monday May 11 spokesman for the department Ian Kelly said: “The U.S. Government is concerned about reports that Aung San Suu Kyi needs medical care and that the Burmese authorities have detained her personal – have detained her primary personal physician, Dr. Tin Myo Win. We urge the Burmese regime to allow Aung San Suu Kyi to receive immediate medical care from a doctor. We further call on the regime to permit Aung San Suu Kyi to meet with her personal attorney immediately.

“As the anniversary of her detention approaches, we are reminded that the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi is unjust. We join with the calls of the international community and urge her immediate release, along with the release of all the more than 2,000 political prisoners the Burmese regime currently holds.”

Meanwhile a US citizen arrested while swimming in a Yangon Rangoon) lake is under investigation for having spent three nights at the compound of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s state media reported Thursday.

John William Yeattaw, 53, was arrested at 5.30 a.m. Wednesday at Inya Lake, which rims Suu Kyi’s family home, where she has been kept under house arrest for the past six years.

Yeattaw arrived in Yangon Saturday and managed to enter Suu Kyi’s compound Sunday night, where he secretly stayed until swimming away early Wednesday, the government mouthpiece New Light of Myanmar newspaper reported.

Authorities found in Yeattaw’s bag a flashlight, a camera, pliers and $100 in cash plus kyat currency notes.

“The government is investigating what Yeattaw’s intention was in entering a prohibited area,” the newspaper said.

Suu Kyi’s compound is under heavy guard and constant surveillance. She was last arrested May 27, 2003, and has been kept under house arrest in near-complete isolation.

Suu Kyi Profile

Aung San Suu Kyi was born into turbulent Burmese politics in 1945, two years before her father, Gen. Aung San, negotiated Burma's freedom from the British Empire. Just before independence, gunmen burst into a room where Aung San was meeting with his top aides, and massacred them all, leaving nine people dead.

Suu Kyi grew up Rangoon, where her mother, Khin Kyi, was active in the Burmese government. She attended an English-speaking Catholic school, and then studied in New Delhi, while her mother was the Burmese ambassador to India. She got her Bachelor of Arts degree from Oxford and obtained her Ph.D. in Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

Suu Kyi seemed destined for an academic career, especially after she met and married Michael Aris, a British scholar and expert on Tibet. The couple lived and worked in Bhutan and Japan, and had two sons, Alexander and Kim.

It wasn't until 1988, when she returned to Rangoon to care for her ailing mother that Suu Kyi's career as a democracy advocate began.
She came home as a series of student protests was escalating into a widespread uprising against the military government of Gen. Ne Win. Although Win's government fell, the military rulers reorganized themselves and crushed the uprising, reportedly by killing thousands of students, monks and other protestors. The military has denied this, saying that only a few dozen people were killed.

During this period, Suu Kyi helped to organize the National League for Democracy, a movement that was strongly influenced by Mohandas Gandhi's teachings on nonviolent political action. In 1989, the military government placed Suu Kyi under house arrest, but offered to release her if she would agree to leave the country. She refused.

After the military nullified the results of the 1990 election, Suu Kyi garnered widespread attention and support for her cause. She received the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, and in 1991, the Nobel Prize for Peace. The military released her from house arrest in 1995, but made it clear that if she left the country, she would not be allowed to return.

When her husband, Michael Aris, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997, she chose not to go to him in Britain, and the Myanmar government refused him a visa to see her. They never saw one another again before he died in 1999.

Except for the brief period in 2002 and 2003 when she was allowed to travel inside the country, Suu Kyi has been held, either in prison or under house arrest. Her detention has been extended year by year, as Myanmar's military rulers realized that her influence had grown, rather than waned. Her recent talks with a U.N. special emissary suggest that she will have to be part of any resolution to the latest crisis.

United States has imposed an economic blockade on Burma. The U.S. Congress on many an occasion has denounced and condemned the Burmese military junta for its undemocratic rule and violation of human rights, denying the rule of law.

- Asian Tribune -