Myanmar junta denies UN envoy a meeting with detained democracy leader Suu Kyi

Myanmar denies UN envoy a meeting with Suu Kyi

YANGON, Myanmar — A United Nations envoy ended his latest mission in Myanmar on Friday, expressing deep regret that the country’s ruling military denied him a meeting with detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Envoy Tomas Ojea Quintana also said that elections planned for this year would not be credible unless the junta allowed freedom of speech.

Quintana arrived Monday for a five-day visit to assess progress on human rights. On Friday the Argentine envoy flew to the administrative capital, Naypyitaw, for a series of meetings with several Cabinet ministers and other key government officials.

He had sought the government’s permission to meet Nobel laureate Suu Kyi, whom he was also barred from seeing on two previous visits.

“I am disappointed that even this time I was unable to meet her, in this crucial year, the election year, the first national elections in 20 years,” the envoy told reporters. He said he was not given a reason for being turned down.

Speaking briefly to reporters after he returned to Yangon, the country’s biggest city and commercial center, he said Myanmar’s people need “to be able to freely express their opinions and to be able to cast their votes without fear.”

“Without full participation, including the almost 2,200 prisoners of conscience, and an environment that allows people and parties to engage in the range of electoral activities, the elections will not be credible,” he said.

Quintana thanked the government for arranging meetings during his brief mission. But he also indicated the junta did not seem responsive to his concerns.

He said he was given no indication of exactly when the general election set for this year will be held, or when an election law guiding it would be passed.

He also said the government refused to acknowledge holding “prisoners of conscience” — political prisoners.

Quintana said he met 15 political prisoners during visits to three prisons, including activists, journalists, community leaders from the Shan ethnic minority and Muslim minority and political party members.

“Despite their imprisonment, many of the prisoners hoped for national reconciliation and peaceful and democratic change in Myanmar,” he said. “Their voices need to be heard in the electoral process.”

On Thursday, the envoy met with senior members of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party.

Tin Oo, the party’s deputy leader recently released from seven years of detention, urged the envoy “to seek the earliest release of (Suu Kyi) and other political prisoners.”

Suu Kyi — detained for 14 of the past 20 years — was sentenced last year to an additional 18 months of house arrest for briefly sheltering an uninvited American, in a trial that drew global condemnation.

The regime’s critics point out that the sentence will likely keep her locked up during any election campaign. The country’s new 2008 constitution has clauses that would bar her from holding political office.

Suu Kyi’s party won elections in 1990 by a landslide, but the military, which has ruled Myanmar since 1962, refused to cede power and has constantly obstructed her party’s operations over the past two decades.

The envoy will present his findings at a meeting of the U.N. Human Rights Council in March.