Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi accepts food after month-long protest
Yangon - Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has accepted food parcels from supporters at her home-cum-jail in Yangon, after refusing deliveries for a month to protest her detention, opposition sources said.
Suu Kyi accepted a food parcel from Ko Myint So, a member of the National League for Democracy (NLD) party which she leads, on Monday night for the first time since August 16, NLD sources confirmed.
Kyi Win, Suu Kyi's attorney who has met with her four times in recent weeks, said Monday that the Nobel peace laureate had refused food parcels "for the sake of the people, to help them obtain their rights and uphold the law."
Suu Kyi's personal doctor, Tin Myo Win, spent four hours at her residence on Sunday, found the sequestered opposition leader to be malnourished and advised her to resume eating regularly.
Kyi Win and Tin Myo Win are two of the few visitors Suu Kyi has been allowed over the past five-plus years of her house arrest in near complete isolation.
Last month Suu Kyi refused to see United Nations special envoy Myanmar Ibrahim Gambari on the grounds that he had failed to end her detention and arrange talks between her and the ruling junta.
Suu Kyi has been under house arrest since May 2003, and has spent about 13 of the past 18 years under detention.
She has held several meetings with her lawyer in recent weeks to appeal her latest sentence of another six months to one year under house arrest, which some claim is a breach of Myanmar law.
Suu Kyi was charged with disturbing the peace and threatening national security by visiting the countryside to rally her supporters in May 2003, prompting an attack on her party by pro-government thugs that left several of her followers dead and Suu Kyi injured.
The charge against her carries a maximum of five years imprisonment, but Suu Kyi's detention is now in its sixth year.
Suu Kyi started refusing to accept food parcels delivered to her house on August 16, as a show of protest against her ongoing detention and the ruling junta's refusal to meet with her to discuss a resolution to Myanmar's political stalemate.
While the junta holds absolute power in Myanmar, the international community still supports Suu Kyi as the most credible leader of the country. The NLD won the 1990 elections in a landslide, but the junta refused to recognize the results. (dpa)