The story of the unwanted visitor to the world’s only Nobel laureate-political prisoner makes truly bizarre reading.
It’s so weird, in fact, that it could really only happen in a country whose political manoeuvrings are stage-managed by a military junta.
Burma’s “ministry of truth” appears to have fooled only the generals into thinking that everything’s normal.
John William Yettaw, a 53-year-old US citizen, who’s a Vietnam War veteran, a Mormon and a father of seven (and told Burmese exiles he was writing a book on “faith-based heroism”) is a self-appointed crusader who’s just made life a lot more difficult for Aung San Suu Kyi, who was 13 days short of her house arrest orders expiring.
(See page 10 of this state-backed newspaper, The New Light of Myanmar its biog of John William Yettaw).
In dead of night on 3 May, Mr Yettaw apparently swam a mile across Rangoon’s Inya Lake, towards the back garden of No 54 University Avenue, where the woman who won democratic elections by a landslide back in 1990, has now spent 13 years and 202 days in what the United Nations has declared “detention illegal under international law”.
Mr Yettaw was found to be carrying a black torch, folding pliers, a camera and Burmese and US currency. He swam to the house with plastic containers lashed to his arms as flotation aids and a pair of home-made flippers which he photographed after attaching to his open-toed sandals.
Weirdest of all, it wasn’t the first time he’d done this, it turns out. He’d apparently made a similar visit to the compound in November last year. On that occasion Ms Suu Kyi had informed her doctor (permitted one visit a month, as negotiated by a UN envoy), who told the police… who did nothing.
This time, the night swimmer is way out of his depth.
Tonight, the revered daughter of Burma’s revered independence leader is in Insein Jail, on the outskirts of Rangoon, where many of the country’s 2,120 political prisoners are incarcerated. She, her two female caretakers and her doctor, are expected to be charged with violating state security laws.
Her lawyer says she’s charged under Section 22 of the State Protection Act, which, when she’s tried in a special court inside the jail on Monday next week, could lead to a three-five year sentence and will shut down any prospect of meaningful political dialogue with the generals.
How convenient for the paranoiac, unloved tyrants who, it’s speculated, may even have stage-managed this entire incident to provide a pretext for keeping a woman committed to non-violent Ghandian philosophy in what they euphemistically call “protective custody“. Could Yettaw the crusader actually have been crusading for the General Than Shwe and his cronies?
If that’s the case, as Burmese exiles suspect, this illegitimate and repressive regime is only protecting itself, once again, from reality. The mantra of the military junta is: “Crush all destructive elements obstructing the stability of the state.” As we’ve seen with the monks and pro-democracy protesters, and now, Aung San Suu Kyi (again), the generals will continue to confront any challenge to their rule.
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If ONLY the whole Western world would stop worrying about trivialities and unite to tell these Burmese Generals to release this wonderful woman.
Its dark times for Myanmar. There is a real crisis within the ranks of the Junta. There is no one that is trusted to take the place of the older Generals that are in power. They are increasingly paranoid of their danger. News was leaked out last year from elements of the government during its crack down on protesters. Bloggers had a part to play but they were being helped from within the military regime itself. It has been leaked that Yettaw was allowed to reach Suu Kyi again as the dictators required a means of killing her before the coming elections. Yettaw is an excuse. Suu Kyi will die in prison from illness.
it is with great sadness that i say i feel u r right in what u are saying modboy though i hope we r wrong.
[...] Miller of Britain’s Channel 4 News explained in a blog post and a video report on Thursday that Mr. Yettaw told Burmese exiles in Thailand, before making his [...]
Where is the UN in this particular case and all the western world nowthttthemselfthemselfeve as
Perhaps exposing the companies that buy precious stones from Burma would help.
This woman is an icon of courage in a corrupt world. Is there no way of insuring she can be returned to at least house arrest? Surely this was a staged invasion that any humanitarian court of justice could prove was an extremely convenient act used by the regime for their own disgraceful purposes.
Just noticed there’s a campaign just started, 64 words for Aung San Suu Kyi, it aims to put pressure on Burma’s military regime to release the Nobel Peace prize winner before the Burmese elections.
Leave your message @ http://www.64forsuu.org
The international community has responded to Aung San Suu Kyi’s recent transfer to Insein Prison with a flurry of attention on Burma not seen since Cyclone Nargis last year. Heads of State, activists and newspaper editors have renewed calls for her immediate release. At the same time, the Burma Army has continued to attack and burn down villages in Karen State and other rural ethnic areas, destroyed farm fields and food stores and routinely shot villagers on sight in its campaign to forcibly relocate all villagers to areas under firm military control. Yet once again the situation of abuse in rural Burma has been marginalised in favour of the more high profile political drama occurring in the country’s urban settings. In calling, quite rightly, for the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the international community must neither neglect the situation of violence and abuse in rural Burma nor miss current opportunities to support those who face this abuse.
This is a position also held by Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, the former UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar, as evidenced by his statement in the New York Times last week.
For more information see – http://www.khrg.org/khrg2009/khrg09c1.html
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