Junta Ban Aung San Suu Kyi From 2010 Election

Press Release: Terry Evans

Burma: Junta Ban Aung San Suu Kyi From 2010 Election

20 February

Burma's paranoid junta has banned pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi from contesting the general election set down for 2010.

Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said his counterpart in Burma, Nyan Win, had explicitly told a gathering of regional ministers that Aung San Suu Kyi would not be allowed to run. Suu Kyi is ineligible to contest the 2010 vote, as the junta has engineered the new constitution to disallow candidacy by Burmese nationals who marry foreigners. Aung San Suu Kyi was married to Briton Michael Aris, who died in 1999.

Aung San Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy achieved a landslide victory in the country's last election in 1990, but the ruling generals refused to hand over power. Aung San Suu Kyi has spent 12 of the last 18 years under house arrest, and currently remains in detention.

ENDS

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