Myanmar's Suu Kyi refusing food supplies
Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has refused new supplies of food for 11 days to the house where she is being detained, prompting fears for her health, exiles and a diplomat said on Tuesday. The Nobel Peace laureate was not thought to be on a hunger strike, the diplomat said, but it was unclear what stocks of food she had in the lakeside Yangon villa where she has been held incommunicado for the past five years.
Myanmar seen barring Suu Kyi from 2010 polls"She's not going to have much fresh produce," the Yangon-based diplomat, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters in the Thai capital. "She's got patchy electricity."
It is only possible to speculate about Suu Kyi's motives, but her refusal to accept food coincides with her refusal last week to meet U.N. envoy Ibrahim Gambari, who is trying to get her and the ruling military junta talking about political reform.
At a meeting with Gambari in March, the 63-year-old looked gaunt and thin. Suu Kyi has been in prison or under house arrest for nearly 13 of the past 19 years.
The exiled arm of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, the party that won a 1990 election landslide only to be denied power by the military, said the last delivery of food accepted by Suu Kyi's housekeeper was on August 15.
"If Daw Aung San Suu Kyi continues to refuse food from her comrades, her health will be of serious concern," it said in a statement from the Thai-Myanmar border. Daw is the Burmese honorific used for the daughter of independence hero Aung San.
It is not the first time her diet has made headlines.
In September 2003, the U.S. government reported she had gone on a hunger strike, although the Myanmar government and the International Committee of the Red Cross said it was untrue.
(Reporting by Ed Cropley; Editing by Darren Schuettler and Paul Tait)
|
|
