Peace and Justice Post

Critics view the opposition leader’s trial as a brazen attempt to exclude her from next year’s multiparty elections

The detained Burmese opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. Photograph: Pornchai Kittiwongsakul/EPA

Amid the secrecy, delays and legal squabbling of recent weeks, there has been one constant in the fate of Aung San Suu Kyi: that her arrest for allegedly breaking the terms of her house arrest is a brazen attempt by Burma’s military rulers to exclude the country’s opposition leader from the political process.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who was sentences to 18 months in detention today, celebrated her 64th birthday in Rangoon’s Insein prison in June, sharing curry and chocolate cake with her guards, was arrested in May after John Yettaw, an eccentric American well-wisher, sneaked into her compound and stayed for two nights without official permission.

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