Supporters continue wait for Suu Kyi release
Updated 2 hours 23 minutes ago
Anticipation is growing among Aung San Suu Kyi's supporters amid rumours of her release. (Reuters: Soe Zeya Tu)
Burma's opposition party has told supporters gathered outside the house of party leader Aung San Suu Kyi to go home and come back in the morning.
The supporters had gathered outside Ms Suu Kyi's home and the party headquarters amid speculation she was about to be released from detention.
Ten trucks of police were stationed a one-minute drive away from the house where the democracy icon has been held for the best part of the last 20 years, and the route was cleared of traffic.
Ms Suu Kyi was due to be released from house arrest on Saturday.
The speculation she would be freed on Friday started when officials of the military junta entered her home at midday (local time).
Journalists and supporters gathered outside her home, waiting to see her released. Another 800 people gathered at the NLD headquarters.
But as night fell in Burma, the National League for Democracy (NLD) told those gathered to go home and come back on Saturday. ...<cont>
) for the big moment to come. Aung San Suu Kyi keeps her people, and the junta, waiting one more night
Burma's general sign order freeing Aung San Suu Kyi, but democracy activist demands unconditional release
Supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi outside the National League for Democracy HQ in Rangoon Supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi gather outside the National League for Democracy headquarters in Rangoon, Burma, waiting for her release. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images
After seven years under house arrest and 15 of the last 21 incarcerated in some form by Burma's military regime, Aung San Suu Kyi today chose one last night of imprisonment so that she might walk truly free.
As speculation over her imminent release reached fever pitch in her home city of Rangoon, word spread that military officials had visited her house and that the order had been signed authorising her immediate release.
Mid-afternoon Burma time, the Guardian understands, the 65-year-old was told she was free to leave the two-storey lakeside villa which the junta had made her prison for most of this decade.
Attached to her release, the military sought to impose strict conditions, understood to be restrictions on where she could travel within Burma, and with whom she could meet.
It was rumoured that Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's best-known democracy advocate and a Nobel peace laureate, demanded an unconditional release and insisted on negotiating her unfettered freedom with military officials before she would set foot outside her door.
From early morning in Rangoon, expectation had grown that Aung San Suu Kyi's release was imminent and could come, with truly Burmese unpredictability, a single day before the 13 November, the day her sentence was due to end....<cont>
11.09am: The BBC's Adam Mynott says Aung San Suu Kyi has been released. She is standing on a box outside her house, waving at the crowd, trying to quieten them so she can speak.
Burma releases Aung San Suu Kyi
Supporters of Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon (13 November 2010) Ms Suu Kyi's supporters gathered at her home in anticipation of her release
The military authorities in Burma have released the pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.
She has appeared in front of a crowd of her supporters who rushed to her house in Rangoon when nearby barricades were removed by the security forces.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years.
Earlier, Ms Suu Kyi's lawyer warned that she was highly unlikely to accept a conditional release if it excluded her from political activity.
The government has restricted her travel and freedom to associate during previous brief spells of liberty, and demanded she quit politics.
She was originally due to be released from house arrest last year, but a case involving an American who swam across Inya Lake to her home, claiming he was on a mission to save her, prompted the latest detention.
Last Sunday, the political party supported by the military government won the country's first election in 20 years. The ballot was widely condemned.
But it's vitally important for them to have shown "progress toward democracy". Which included the sham election & the release of Aung San Suu Kyi. They want respectability & legitimacy. Don't ask me why, but they obviously do.
Suu Kyi open to talks with junta
By South East Asia correspondent Zoe Daniel
Updated 4 hours 55 minutes ago
Working towards reconciliation: Aung San Suu Kyi after her release at the weekend (Reuters: Soe Zeya Tun)
Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has left her home for the first time in seven years and stepped straight back into controversy.
The Nobel Laureate and democracy campaigner was officially set free on Saturday night after spending 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest.
In her first outing she spoke to her supporters, who have been turning out in large numbers to greet her, and urged them not to lose hope for Burma.
Ms Suu Kyi says she will work towards reconciliation and that she is open to talks with anyone - including the country's military junta.
"We all have to work together and that unity is strength and we've got to find new ways and we have got to make our movement wider," she told the ABC.
"We have broadened our movement and we've got to find new people and new ways to support our dream.
"We would like to engage with the military junta. We would like to engage with everybody who we think would help the democratic process."
She says she wants to talk to leaders in other countries about what they think they can do to help bring democracy to Burma.
"I would like to talk to them. I would like to see how they think they can support us. I think there has to be an exchange," she said.
"I have just come out of house arrest after six years and I don't just want to go around and tell people you do this and you do that, we want this and we want that.
"I would like to have a genuine exchange to find out what we can do to help each other."
Ms Suu Kyi says she is open to talks with other countries about easing sanctions on Burma, which she says hurt the Burmese people more than the junta.
Ms Suu Kyi has also thanked Australia for its support.
"My very warmest thanks to the people of Australia for all that they have done for us," she said.
Ms Suu Kyi says she is saddened by how little has changed politically in Burma since her detention.
"I noticed today how poor a lot of our people are and I was very touched by the fact that in spite of their obvious difficulties, the hardships that they have to face, they were so warm in their welcome and so enthusiastic," she said.
She says it is too early to tell how the recent elections, which have been widely condemned as a sham, will impact Burma.
"At the moment I don't see any change at all. I am not sure whether things are better or things are worse. I think we have got to wait for a little bit to find out," she said.
Assassination threat
While her release has brought a rare moment of joy to Burma, Ms Suu Kyi will now be at high risk of re-arrest because she remains an obvious threat to the power of the junta.
Dr Muang Zarni, an exiled dissident and research fellow on Burma at the London School of Economics, says the junta fears what Ms Suu Kyi represents.
"It is not that they fear this single woman but they fear what she has come to embody which is the popular desire for anti-dictatorship government, popular desire for freedom and justice," he said.
"So as long as she embodies that popular aspiration and concretely popular support, she is going to remain a major challenge."
Before Ms Suu Kyi was re-arrested in 2003 her convoy was attacked in what was widely interpreted as an attempt on her life.
Dr Zarni says there is a high risk of that happening again.
"Next time around when she becomes a major headache, a major thorn in their side, again despite the fact that they have monopoly control over formal political processing, then I think there is a possibility that they will assassinate her," he said.
"That is my greatest fear. She needs to preserve herself if she wants to be useful for the Burmese public and for the Burmese opposition movement."...<cont>
