Dharamsala, August 12 – His Holiness the Dalai Lama, currently on a religious tour of Ladakh, today called for the release of fellow Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi.
“I am deeply saddened by the extended detention of Aung San Suu Kyi to a further period of house arrest,” the Tibetan leader said in a statement posted on his Official website Wednesday.
“As a fellow Buddhist, I would like to once again appeal to the Burmese authorities to show magnanimity and understanding by releasing her. Doing so will not only contribute towards reconciliation but also will be a goodwill gesture.”
Suu Kyi was sentenced Tuesday to three years’ imprisonment for breaching her house arrest by allowing an American man to stay at her lakeside house where he swam uninvited. But the country’s leader, General Than Shwe, commuted the sentence to 18 months of house arrest.
Suu Kyi’s conviction drew criticism from several world leaders including UN chief Ban Ki Moon and US president Barack Obama. But China supported the verdict and said the international community should respect the sentence. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu Jiang said, “International society should fully respect Myanmar’s judicial sovereignty.”
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) called Suu Kyi’s conviction a “set back” to its efforts “as a regional bloc to build an image of being a single, united community”.
“It is lamentable that we cannot interfere with the affairs of another sovereign state such as Burma. But still, we feel that it is a setback on what we are doing as far as bringing together and as having unity among ASEAN because Burma is a member of ASEAN,” Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita told reporters Wednesday at the National Summit on International Humanitarian Law in the Philippines.
