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YANGON, Myanmar, June 21 (UPI) -- World leaders reiterated calls for Myanmar to release democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi on her birthday, which she again celebrated under house arrest. The 1999 Nobel Peace Prize laureate remains in her lakeside house on the outskirts of Yangon, formerly called Rangoon and also the former capital.
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Her lawyer and spokesman, Nyan Win, said she celebrated her 65th birthday Saturday by having lunch with house builders allowed by the junta into her grounds to make renovations.
Messages of support from around the world were posted on Facebook and other social networking Web sites. Among international leaders who called for Suu Kyi's release were U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and U.S. President Barack Obama.
Last week a Free Burma coalition demonstrated outside the Myanmar Embassy in Manila. In South Africa, a symbolic empty chair was placed at the table of a meeting of The Elders of which Suu Kyi is an honorary member. The Elders is a group of senior international statesmen founded by Nelson Mandela and includes former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.
"The international community should also make every effort to help Burma/Myanmar's divided peoples to find a peaceful and prosperous way forward," said Elders member Martti Ahtisaari, former president of Finland and a Nobel Peace Laureate.
Suu Kyi's birthday has focused pressure again on the ruling military to make more substantial moves toward democracy if they wish the country to lose its international pariah status.
Suu Kyi's iconic status comes from her steadfast opposition to the military government in Myanmar, which has ruled the country most of the years since independence from the British in 1962. They changed the country's name from Burma in 1989.
In April Myanmar's highest court rejected Suu Kyi's latest appeal against her house arrest, which was extended for violating the terms of a previous detention by briefly sheltering an uninvited U.S. intruder in her home in May 2009.
She was sentenced in August to three years in prison with hard labor but the ruling military head of government, Senior Gen. Than Shwe, commuted the sentence to 18 months house arrest.
Because Suu Kyi, who has spent about 14 of the past 20 years in some form of detention, has a criminal record so, under the junta's recent election laws, she and her political party aren't eligible to contest the general election scheduled for this year.
The military hasn't set a date for elections but last month Prime Minister Thein Sein and more than 20 other military ministers in the governing resigned their military positions to run in the elections as civilians.
Sein, a former lieutenant general, and the other ex-military leaders set up the Union Solidarity and Development Party, which they claim has around 24 million members. But many analysts say people are either forced to join or join to improve their job prospects.
Regardless of how many parties are on the election ballots, civilians will never make up more than 75 percent of the country's parliamentary seats because 25 percent have been reserved for military appointments.
If former junta leaders are elected, then the military's effective representation could be much greater than their allocated quarter of seats.
