Suu Kyi meets lawyer amid health worries

Published September 14, 2008

YANGON, Sept 13: Myanmar’s detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi met with her lawyer on Saturday, witnesses said, amid worries for her health after her party said she was not accepting food.

Lawyer Kyi Win arrived around 2pm (0730 GMT) at the lakeside Yangon home where the Nobel peace laureate has been confined for most of the last 19 years, the witnesses said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

He left after a little more than an hour and went to the home affairs ministry, they added.

The meeting was their fifth since Aug 8. Previously they have discussed filing a legal appeal against her house arrest, but the subject of their latest talks was not immediately known.

After meeting her on Thursday he said she appeared in good health, after reports she was not accepting food.Aside from a medical check-up by her personal physician last month, Aung San Suu Kyi has refused to meet with anyone else including visiting UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari last month and the junta’s liaison officer last week.

Concerns about her health have mounted since her National League for Democracy (NLD) party said on Sept 5 that she had refused most of her food rations for the last three weeks.

The regime says she is not staging a hunger strike, and the NLD has stopped short of using the term.

But the party has said that her refusal of food supplies was “to denounce her continuing detention, which is unfair under the law”.

The 63-year-old has no other source of food aside from the daily supplies provided by the military regime.

Her party won a landslide victory in a 1990 election but the junta never allowed it to take office. The military has ruled Myanmar since 1962.—AFP

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