Aung San Suu Kyi ‘on hunger strike’

Burma's opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi appears to be on a hunger strike and is refusing all contact with the outside world, according to senior members of her National League for Democracy, writes Edward Loxton for The First Post.

Her lawyer, Kyi Win, was the last person to see her, on August 17, at the lakeside residence where she has been confined by Burma's military regime for 13 of the past 19 years. Kyi Win said she appeared to be refusing deliveries of food and other household necessities provided exclusively by the NLD.

There was no response from Suu Kyi when UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari made two attempts to enter her home during his latest mission to Burma, which ended at the weekend. Gambari also failed to meet junta leader General Than Shwe, and Burma observers say the UN attempt to bring the two sides together has now completely failed.

NLD spokesman Win Naing said at the height of Gambari's six-day visit, his sixth mission to Burma since taking over as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon's personal envoy, that the Nigerian diplomat was "wasting his time".

Gambari said at the end of his visit, which he extended by one day in the vain hope of meeting Suu Kyi, that he had met a full range of Burmese political representatives, but the NLD accused him directly of misleading public opinion.

His first session with NLD representatives, shortly after his arrival, lasted only 20 minutes, and a second, longer meeting was arranged only after the party complained that Gambari appeared to have no interest in hearing their side.

Virtually everybody Gambari met on this mission had ties to the junta, including a paramilitary group involved in thuggish attacks on any display of opposition to the regime.

FIRST POSTED AUGUST 26, 2008