Aung San Suu Kyi deserves flogging like 'naughty child': Junta

Mizzima News

Thursday, 12 June 2008 16:29

New Delhi – The Burmese military junta has said detained pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi deserves flogging like a 'naughty child' for threatening national security and peace.   The Burmese military junta has said detained pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi deserves flogging like a 'naughty child' for threatening national security and peace.   [ File Photo:Mizzima ]   Justifying the continuous detention of Aung San Suu Kyi, who is now in the sixth year of consecutive detention, the junta on Wednesday alleged that she and other political prisoners have been in contact with and received cash assistance from armed rebel groups and foreign governments. "Due to the crimes they have committed, they deserve flogging punishment as in the case of naughty children," said the New Light of Myanmar newspaper, which is the official mouthpiece of the junta. The junta's justification of the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi for the sixth consecutive year is in conformity with the law and it compared its law with anti-terror laws applied in countries including the United States and Britain. The junta listing Malaysia, Singapore, US and Britain as countries that apply anti-terror laws said, "Myanmar [Burma] is not the only country that promulgates laws to prevent those who pose danger to the State." "If necessary to guard the motherland and safeguard the lives and property of the people, every government has to promulgate laws and impose restrictions," said the newspaper, which the junta uses as a tool to spread its propaganda. But critics and supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi said even under the junta's draconian law, she can only be held in detention for the maximum of five years, which expired last month. Jered Genser, a US based lawyer for an advocacy group 'Freedom Now', who has been hired as a legal counsel for Aung San Suu Kyi by her family, has said that the junta's 1975 constitution only permits detaining someone deemed a threat to national security for only a period of five years, renewable one year at a time. Genser earlier told Mizzima that under Article 10 (b) of Burma's State Protection Law 1975, a person in Burma who is deemed a "threat to the sovereignty and security of the State and the peace of the people" can be detained for up to a maximum of five years through a restrictive order, renewable one year at a time. But the junta on Wednesday gave a different interpretation of the law saying the constitution has vested power on the cabinet to detain individuals posing a threat to national security and peace for a period of one year and if necessary to further detain for five years without trial, renewable one year at a time. "Under the 1975 law to prevent those who pose danger to the State, the central body has the power to restrict a citizen for one year, and if need arises, it can grant permission to continue to do so for five more years," the junta said in the paper. < Prev   Next >