Myanmar junta warns against demonstrations

YANGON, Myanmar, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- Myanmar's military regime has warned people not to demonstrate after judges postponed a verdict in the trial of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

An editorial in the newspaper New Light of Myanmar, the mouthpiece of the military regime, said the government would "ward off subversive elements and disruptions." The public should be on guard against "some (who) arouse the people to take to the streets to come to power," the English-language editorial said.

Observers have suggested the editorial shows the government would use heavy police force against anyone attempting to demonstrate around or near Insein Prison where Suu Kyi, 64, is being held.

She faces up to five years in jail if found guilty of violating her house arrest.

During the trial roads have been blockaded with barbed wire and several vans of riot police line the streets around the prison. Unconfirmed media reports say that several members of Suu Kyi's political party, the National League for Democracy, were arrested in the past week.

The on-again, off-again trial in Yangon, formerly Rangoon and the former capital of what was called Burma, began May 18.

A verdict was expected on Friday but will now come on Aug. 11. The judges said they needed more time to consider the case, according to the few foreign diplomats allowed in as observers to the mostly secret proceeding.

Diplomats from Britain, France, Germany, Italy and Norway are among those allowed in to the trial. Journalists have been barred.

Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy won a landslide election victory in 1990. But the junta, in power since a coup in 1962, has never recognized the results. The 1991 Nobel Peace Laureate has spent 14 of the past 20 years under some kind of arrest and detention, including house arrest since 2003.

The government accuses her of violating her house arrest in early May when U.S. citizen John Yettaw swam across a lake and gained entry uninvited to her lakeside residence.

He was there for two days until persuaded by Suu Kyi to leave.

Suu Kyi's lawyer has argued that she cannot be tried because she was put under house arrest for allegedly violating laws based on a 1974 national constitution that had been superseded by a new one at the time.

He also argued that the government's security guards should have prevented the 53-year-old American from entering Suu Kyi's property.

Yettaw and Suu Kyi's two female assistants are also on trial with her over the same incident.

Yettaw, who made his swim only several days before the end of Suu Kyi's six years of house arrest, pleaded not guilty. The Mormon and father of seven children explained to the court that he dreamt Suu Kyi would be assassinated and that he had gone to warn her.

The trial has been widely condemned by the international community, including most recently Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Standing alongside U.S. President Barack Obama in the Oval Office last Thursday, she said the Philippines backs Washington's condemnation of human rights violations in Myanmar as well as South Korea.

The generals have dismissed all criticism.

A few days before the expected verdict last week, another editorial in the New Light of Myanmar ruled out any "illogical" release on the grounds that it would show Suu Kyi is privileged. "Making frequent demands for the release of Daw Suu Kyi implies that she is above the law. Here, our concept is that no one is above the law. Demanding her release shows reckless disregard for the law."

Comments by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon for her release were "questionable" and "showed total disregard for the sovereignty of our country," the writer said.