Fury as US senator visits Burmese junta chief

Published on Friday 14 August 2009 22:04

AN AMERICAN politician's trip to Burma has sparked anger that the military junta could use his presence to legitimise the detention of opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Democratic Senator Jim Webb was yesterday scheduled to have a rare meeting with junta leader Than Shwe. He is the first US Congress member to visit Burma in more than a decade.

Walter Lohman, director of the Asian studies centre at Heritage Foundation, a US thinktank, said the meeting "will certainly serve to validate the junta at a time when international revulsion has reached one of its periodic crisis-driven peaks."

Mr Webb's visit comes amid anger at Tuesday's conviction of Ms Suu Kyi and the start of a further 18 months of house arrest for the Nobel Peace Prize laureate. She has been detained without trial for more than 14 of the past 20 years.

In a letter to Mr Webb, three Burmese campaign groups wrote: "We are concerned that the military regime will manipulate and exploit your visit and propagandise that you endorse their treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi and over 2,100 political prisoners, their human rights abuses on the people of Burma, and their attack against the ethnic minorities."

Ms Suu Kyi is charged with violating terms of her house arrest because an uninvited American man swam secretly to her lakeside home and stayed two days. Her supporters say the junta is using the bizarre episode as an excuse to keep her detained through next year's elections.