Detained Burma Opposition Leader Unhappy About Visitor Restrictions

Detained Burma opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is unhappy about restrictions on the visitors she is allowed under house arrest, including members of her legal team and an architect needed to help repair her dilapidated lakeside home.

Nyan Win, one of her lawyers, said after meeting with her Thursday that she complained that the ruling military junta is infringing upon her rights.

Her complaint comes as the regime prepares for elections next year and seeks more recognition from the international community. The United States had isolated the junta with political and economic sanctions, but the Obama administration decided recently to step up engagement as a way of promoting reforms.

Suu Kyi "has asked us to send a letter to the authorities to allow all four lawyers to meet her at once and to meet the architect," said Nyan Win, who along with fellow lawyer Kyi Win met with her to discuss an appeal of her most recent sentence of house arrest.

"She said this is her personal right and authorities had no right to limit them," he said.

Suu Kyi said she would prefer to listen to the views of more lawyers and that she needs an architect to help repair the two-story house where she is confined, Nyan Win said.

The terms of Suu Kyi's current detention are less strict than her previous term of house arrest, when the only outsiders she was allowed to see were her doctor and, occasionally, visiting U.N. envoys.

Under an eight-point set of rules, Suu Kyi can now receive visitors with prior permission from the junta, has the right to medical treatment by doctors and nurses, and is allowed to see state-controlled newspapers and magazines and state-run television. She recently met with several foreign ambassadors stationed in Burma.

Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has spent 14 of the last 20 years in detention. In August, she was sentenced to an additional 18 months of house arrest for allowing an uninvited American to stay briefly at her home earlier this year.

The sentence, which ensured that she would not be able to participate in next year's elections, drew international condemnation.

Suu Kyi's legal team plans to appeal the sentence to the Supreme Court.