Myanmar's Suu Kyi charged over US visitor

Myanmar's military junta have taken pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi to prison, and charged her today over an  incident where an American man swam across a lake in order to visit her.The 63 year old has spent 13 of the past 19 years in imposed isolation at her home since the junta refused to recognise the NLD's landslide victory in the country's last elections in 1990. 

It is only about two weeks before the Nobel Laureate's latest period of detention at home is due to expire, and critics said it was a way for the ruling generals to keep her locked up ahead of elections due in 2010.

And from Bloomberg: 
Today she was charged with breaching the conditions of her house arrest. Her trial begins 18th May, and the Nobel Prize winner faces a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison if found guilty. 

This is the cunning plan of the regime to put Aung San Suu Kyi in continuous detention beyond the six years allowed by the law they used to justify the detention of her," Aung Din, executive director of the Washington-based US Campaign for Burma, said in a statement.

Suu Kyi has been detained since May 2003 under a law that allows someone deemed a threat to national security to be held without charge, according to Genser, president of the U.S.-based Freedom Now group.

The junta says it can detain her under the law for six years, or until May 27, and is now looking for another means to deny Suu Kyi her freedom, he added.

Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan: "Unplayed Piano", a song written for the Nobel Laureate:

Heartbreaking... 

Unplayed pianos 

Are often by a window 

In a room where nobody loved goes 
She sits alone with her silent song 
Somebody bring her home...