John Yettaw Says He Accomplished His Goal By Swimming To See Suu Kyi

(CNN)

The American man who swam to Aung San Suu Kyi’s home in Myanmar said Thursday he still believes he did the right thing, even though his visit led to an extension of the pro-democracy leader’s house arrest.

John Yettaw, 53, swam across a lake to Suu Kyi’s home in May and stayed for two days before authorities arrested him along with Suu Kyi and two of her staff.

His presence violated the terms of Suu Kyi’s house arrest — which was about to expire — leading a judge to extend it by another 18 months.

But Yettaw said he made the trip to Yangon to save Suu Kyi from assassination, and that it was successful. What critics have described as a “stunt” brought enough attention to her plight, he said, to ensure that Suu Kyi could not be killed by the country’s ruling military junta.

Yettaw said on CNN’s “American Morning” that he is “grateful that she’s alive, grateful that the entire world is watching and there’s no way these generals are ever going to try to assassinate her.”

To many, however, his visit did more harm than good. Some thought he might be mentally ill to attempt what he did — an idea he rejects, though he says he can understand why people believe it.

But Yettaw said he had no idea that Suu Kyi would be arrested and put on trial for something that he would do.

“I wept every day and I’ve suffered every day” because of the punishment she received, he told CNN. He called her sentence “heartbreaking.”

The case of Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been the symbol of the country’s opposition for two decades, first came to Yettaw’s attention when he was in Thailand and saw her photograph.

“I instantly had a premonition, or a vision, that I saw myself going through a lake and over a fence and was at a back door of a house,” he told CNN. “Then (I) Googled from there and realized she lived next to Inya Lake and I got a visa to get into Yangon. And I thought, since this has been presented to me, I’m going to make this happen.”

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