Suu Kyi house arrest halts family battle
A legal battle prompted by sibling rivalry over the family home of democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been postponed due to her house arrest.
A Myanmar court on Monday granted her lawyer’s request for a delay while she is confined to her home.
“We cannot seek her instructions, so we applied for a temporary suspension of the hearing. The judge adjourned the hearing to 26 December,” one of her lawyers said.
Legal battle
Aung San Oo, an estranged elder brother living in the United States, has fought a protracted legal battle for the Yangon home where Suu Kyi is now confined after surgery last month which followed nearly three months in detention.
Since her return to Myanmar in the late 1980s, the Nobel laureate has spent several lengthy periods under house arrest at the property which occupies a large lakeside plot in the heart of an elite residential area.
Suu Kyi, 58, was detained at a secret location following a 30 May clash between her followers and pro-government supporters.
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Suu Kyi has directed her struggle for democracy from the family residence |
She was later confined to her home, following major surgery last month, but Myanmar has ignored Western sanctions and international calls for her full release.
Elections
Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) won Myanmar’s last democratic elections in 1990, but has never been allowed to govern.
Instead, the military, which has run Myanmar for most of the last 40 years, has locked up and harassed the NLD’s leaders and closed many of its offices.
Suu Kyi has directed her struggle for democracy from the residence and compound left by her mother Khin Kyi, widow of Myanmar independence hero General Aung San.
Aung San was assassinated in 1947 when the country, then called Burma, stood on the threshold of independence from Britain.