Myanmar's Suu Kyi set for another year's house arrest

BANGKOK - MYANMAR democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi faces another year under house arrest as the junta shows no sign of easing its political agenda after the devastating cyclone, analysts said on Thursday.

The Nobel peace prize winner has spent more than 12 of the last 18 years locked inside her lakeside home in Yangon.

The order confining her to her home comes up for renewal on Monday, and analysts said its extension has become routine.

'They are going to extend her arrest just like every year,' said Win Min, a Myanmar analyst based in Thailand. 'They will use the same letter as before and just change the date - it's not a big deal for them.'

Normally the extension of her house arrest attracts global headlines - and condemnation - but this year Myanmar faces far more immediate concerns as it struggles to cope with the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis.

The storm left 133,000 dead or missing when it struck nearly three weeks ago, and two million people are still in desperate need of food, shelter and medicine, according to the United Nations.

Normally, high-level UN guests would raise Ms Suu Kyi's detention with the generals, but now the issue has moved to the back-burner, said Myanmar analyst Aung Naing Oo.

'She has been forgotten because of the scale of the destruction,' he said.

'Politics is not a key issue now for the international community, everyone is avoiding making political statements because it's most important to get the Burmese military to accept international assistance.'

Myanmar's refusal to free the 62-year-old opposition leader has landed the country under US and European sanctions, which were tightened last year after a deadly crackdown on pro-democracy marches led by Buddhist monks.

The last time she was seen in public was during the monks' marches in September, when she appeared briefly at the gate to her home and greeted the protesters with tears in her eyes.

That moment galvanised the protests, sending more than 100,000 people into the streets in the days that followed, only to be beaten and shot by security forces.

Keeping her under house arrest has effectively silenced the woman known here simply as 'The Lady', while leaving her National League for Democracy party rudderless.

Ms Suu Kyi led the party to a landslide victory in 1990 elections, but they have never been allowed to govern. -- AFP