Word: junta
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi will spend another 18 months as a prisoner of Burma's military junta, a Rangoon court decreed today. She was found guilty of violating the terms of her house arrest after an American man called John Yettaw swam to her lakeside house in Rangoon in May. Yettaw, who has been in poor health, was sentenced to seven years in prison with hard labor...
...Nobel Peace Prize laureate was initially jailed for three years with hard labor until a special order from junta chief General Than Shwe was read out in court commuting her sentence to 18 months under house arrest. The verdict has prompted further global outrage and renewed calls for stronger action against the dictatorship. Suu Kyi has already spent more than 13 of the past 20 years in jail or detention. (See pictures of Burma's discontent...
...Alliance Burma's growing ties to North Korea were a hot topic at an ASEAN security forum in Phuket, where U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that such cooperation poses a "direct threat to Burma's neighbors." Some security experts worry that Pyongyang may be assisting the ruling junta with its ambition to acquire nuclear weapons...
...Burma, which the ruling junta has renamed Myanmar, hasn't seen anything resembling openness for nearly five decades, having been ruled by military regimes since 1962. Its generals have isolated the country, ground it into poverty and brutally suppressed periodic mass uprisings in support of democracy - the last, in 2007, was led by Buddhist monks who were gunned down or arrested. The regime says it will hold national elections in 2010, but many observers say they are designed to cement military rule under a civilian guise. The democracy movement's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been kept under house...
...tense standoff between U.S. ships and the Kang Nam 1 would hardly upset Pyongyang; the Burmese junta has proven to be wholly insensitive to criticism and protest from the outside world. Watchers of both isolated states see a joint circling of wagons in the face of a hostile international community. With many policy makers already tearing at their hair over North Korea's nuclear intransigence, it's a state of affairs that can only deepen global concern...