Suu Kyi house arrest extended

The Burmese junta today extended indefinitely the five-year detention order under which the pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, is held at her home in Rangoon. The current order was due to expire this week, writes Edward Loxton for The First Post.

The news emerged after plainclothes police and pro-regime thugs arrested about 20 members of Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, today as they marched towards her home.

The NLD demonstrators, brandishing a large picture of Suu Kyi, chanted demands for her release and for free access to cyclone-hit areas of the country for international relief workers.

Suu Kyi has spent 12 of the past 18 years in detention because the regime regards her as a "threat to national security and public order". Dozens of her party supporters are serving long prison terms.

Meanwhile, the outside world is waiting to see if the junta makes good last week's promise to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to open up the country's cyclone-hit regions to all international aid workers. While there are reports today from Rangoon of some aid workers finally being permitted to leave the city for the Irrawaddy delta, the BBC reported that one British relief team had been turned back at a road block as it tried to deliver relief supplies.

The BBC report included film footage showing roads thickly lined with desperate survivors begging for food - several days after the regime claimed the relief phase of the cyclone recovery programme had been successfully completed.

FIRST POSTED MAY 27, 2008