Singapore (CNN) — President Obama on Sunday called for the release of Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other political prisoners.

“There are clear steps that must be taken: the unconditional release of all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi; an end to conflicts with minority groups; and a genuine dialogue between the government, the democratic opposition and minority groups,” according to Obama, who said the regime should work to ensure its people’s needs are met.

He spoke during a meeting with ASEAN-10 leaders that included the prime minister of Myanmar. Obama is the first U.S. president to take part in a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations economic alliance. The formal meeting was held Sunday.

That 10-nation alliance includes Myanmar, which the United States and other nations have accused of human rights abuses.

U.S. officials were careful to avoid any perception that Obama’s presence at the ASEAN meeting would amount to a bilateral discussion with the prime minister of Myanmar.

After years of refusing direct talks with Myanmar, also known as Burma, the United States has indicated a possible re-engagement with the military regime it considers repressive for cracking down on political opposition, including the National League for Democracy.

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“There is a plan to release her soon … so she can organise her party,” Min Lwin, a director-general in the foreign ministry, to ld the Associated Press. He gave no details and it was unclear whether Aung San Suu Kyi would be allowed to campaign or stand for election.

Despite the conciliatory remarks, the country’s constitution includes provisions that bar her from holding office and ensure the primacy of the government in the military.

The Nobel peace prize winner has spent 14 of the last 20 years under house arrest. In August a court sentenced her to an additional 18 months after an American, John Yettaw, swam across a lake to her villa in Rangoon and stayed overnight.

Burma’s junta in the the past has raised expectations of Aung San Suu Kyi’s imminent release only to dash the hopes of her supporters at home and abroad.

Pro-democracy campaigners cautioned against reading too much into the latest hints on Suu Kyi’s release. “They’ve been saying these sorts of things for a long time but they have never delivered on them,” said Anna Roberts, the director of the Burma Campaign UK. “The regime’s main concern is get economic sanctions lifted and get approval for the sham elections next year.”

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Burmese authorities are not allowing Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi to hear her appeal in person at the Rangoon Division Court on Thursday, said Suu Kyi’s lawyer, Nyan Win.

Nyan Win said police told him they could not take her to the court, which has sole jurisdiction over Suu Kyi’s case.

The police from Special Intelligence Department, known as “special branch,” stationed at Suu Kyi’s compound would normally escort her to the court, said Nyan Win.

Suu Kyi’s appeal was accepted by the Rangoon Division Court on Sept. 4, and the hearing will take place on Thursday at 10 a.m.

Suu Kyi was sentenced to 18 months under house arrest on Aug. 11 on the charge of allowing an American, John William Yettaw, to stay at her lakeside home when she was under house arrest.

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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(CNN) — U.S. Sen. Jim Webb obtained the release Saturday of American John Yettaw, who had been sentenced to seven years of hard labor in Myanmar for visiting detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, his office said.

Webb, who chairs the East Asia and Pacific Affairs subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will accompany Yettaw to Bangkok, Thailand, on Sunday aboard a military aircraft, his office said.

Yettaw’s wife, Betty, told CNN from Missouri that she had received no official word of her husband’s release. She added that if there were anything positive about the situation, it is that people now know where Myanmar is. She declined further comment.

It is the second success in a day for Webb, a Democrat from Virginia, who earlier held separate meetings with Suu Kyi and Myanmar’s top official, junta leader Senior Gen. Than Shwe.

“It is my hope that we can take advantage of these gestures as a way to begin laying a foundation of good will and confidence-building in the future,” Webb said in a statement.

Webb met with Suu Kyi for nearly an hour Saturday, his office said. He described the meeting as “an opportunity for me to convey my deep respect to Aung San Suu Kyi for the sacrifices she has made on behalf of democracy around the world.”

Webb is also the first American official ever to meet with Than Shwe. Webb said he requested that the country’s leadership release Suu Kyi from her 18-month house arrest.

Webb is the first member of Congress to visit Myanmar, also known as Burma, in more than a decade. Though he is not in the country on behalf of the State Department, he is there in his official capacity as a senator, and his trip may indicate a shift in America’s hard-line stance against the reclusive country.

“He has been very consistent in his view about the need for aggressive diplomacy with these kind of authoritarian regimes around the world,” Webb’s spokeswoman, Jessica Smith, told CNN from Washington.

She said Webb believes that “if we engage with Burma, it will benefit all countries involved if we speak to Burma’s leadership.”

Webb’s discussions with the country’s leaders were “very frank,” Smith said.

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Some people are saying that Aung San Suu Kyi’s verdict today—18 months of house arrest, commuted down from three years of hard labor—is a sign that Burma’s junta leader Than Shwe really is beginning to show more flexibility. They’re wrong. The junta is subjecting the opposition leader’s freedom to “death by a thousand cuts,” the notorious Chinese torture technique that prolonged prisoners’ lives but only temporarily, and at a ghastly price.

The generals who rule Burma are trying to take a page from Beijing’s playbook, hoping that the world—and their own citizens—will tolerate continuing government repression as they do in China, which happens to be a key ally of the Burmese generals. But the junta has forgotten one important thing. The grand bargain that has prevailed between the Chinese government and its people goes like this: Beijing promises to keep delivering better and better living standards to its citizens, who in turn accept its benign autocracy and refrain from toppling the government. Though that Chinese deal has come under strain at times, it has survived better than expected for more than three decades.

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The court initially sentenced Suu Kyi to three years in prison before the head of the country’s ruling junta commuted it to a year-and-a-half of house arrest.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate faced a maximum sentence of five years in prison.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has blasted the verdict.

“She should not have been tried and she should not have been convicted,” Clinton said on a diplomatic trip to Africa.

“We continue to call for her release from continuing house arrest. We also call for the release of more than 2,000 political prisoners, including the American John Yettaw,” she added.

Yettaw swam across a lake to Suu Kyi’s residence earlier this year, prompting the charge she had violated her house arrest.

“The Burmese junta should immediately end its repression of so many in this country, start a dialogue with the opposition and the ethnic groups. Otherwise the elections they have scheduled for next year will have absolutely no legitimacy,” Clinton said, using the traditional name for the country.

The Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev were among a group of Nobel laureates who also slammed the verdict.

They demanded that the U.N. Security Council investigate “war crimes and crimes against humanity” committed by the military junta that rules the country.

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(New York, August 11, 2009) – The politically motivated guilty verdict against the Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi is a reprehensible abuse of power by Burma’s military government, Human Rights Watch said today. Human Rights Watch called on Burma’s allies and other governments to condemn the verdict, demand the Nobel Prize laureate’s immediate and unconditional release, and impose additional targeted sanctions against the military leadership.

On August 11, 2009, a criminal court inside Insein prison in Rangoon sentenced Suu Kyi to 3 years of imprisonment for violating her order for house arrest, with the sentence reduced to 18 months, to be served under house arrest.

“This trial was a farce, a brutal distortion of the legal process,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “By silencing prominent opponents through bogus trials, the generals are clearly showing why the elections they have been touting for next year won’t bring change.”

Police arrested Suu Kyi, 64, and her two assistants, Khin Khin Win, 65, and her daughter, Win Ma Ma, 41, on May 14, 2009, and transferred them to Insein prison in the commercial capital, Rangoon. They went on trial on May 18, charged with breaching the terms of Suu Kyi’s house arrest order by permitting the uninvited visit of an American, John William Yettaw, on May 4 and 5.

Yettaw has been sentenced to 7 years in prison with hard labor, convicted of the same charges of breaching Aung San Suu Kyi’s detention order, and with breaching immigration laws. All four defendants were charged under the draconian State Emergency Act (also known as the Law to Safeguard the State Against the Dangers of Those Desiring to Cause Subversive Acts).

Criminal trials of political prisoners in Burma do not meet international fair trial standards. The judges are not independent, and the defense does not have an adequate opportunity to present its case. Suu Kyi’s trial lasted from May 18 to July 31, with frequent delays. The court permitted 14 witnesses for the prosecution, but only two for the defense, despite several appeals by Suu Kyi’s lawyers to present additional witnesses.

The trial has been closed to the public, with foreign diplomats and the press only permitted to observe the trial on a few occasions. The prosecution claimed that Suu Kyi was jointly responsible with the authorities, who place guards around her home, for the breach of security on her residence, and, therefore, the intrusion violated the terms of her house arrest.

“There was never any doubt that the verdict would be a purely political decision,” said Adams. “Any suggestion that evidence presented or excluded had any impact on the outcome of this fraudulent trial is ridiculous.”

Suu Kyi’s trial had already been widely condemned by the international community. US President Barack Obama called it “a show trial.” The UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, visited Burma on July 3 and 4, but was denied access to Suu Kyi. Even a normally close ally of the Burmese government, Singapore, expressed “dismay” at the arrest, calling it “a setback for the national reconciliation process.”

Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) also called for her release: a statement by the ASEAN chair, Thailand, “expresse[d] grave concern about recent developments relating to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi,” reminding Burma’s military government that “as a responsible member of ASEAN, [Burma] has the responsibility to protect and promote human rights.”

Human Rights Watch called on ASEAN to use the recently formed ASEAN Inter-Governmental Commission on Human Rights, the terms of reference for which were agreed on July 20, to hold the Burmese government to account for its actions.

Burma’s supporters and trade partners – namely China, Russia, India, and ASEAN member states – should denounce this verdict and explore measures to impose targeted financial sanctions against the military leadership in Burma. Countries already imposing targeted sanctions – including the US, the European Union, Switzerland, Australia, and Canada – should expand and tighten the existing targeted financial sanctions, which focus on individual abusers and companies but not the population at large.

The UN Security Council should condemn Burma strongly and finally move to take meaningful action against Burma’s military rulers. This could include an international arms embargo and other targeted sanctions on Burma.

“Burma’s allies, such as China, Russia, and India, need to exert pressure on Burma’s military rulers to free Suu Kyi immediately,” said Adams. “It’s time for ASEAN, the UN, and concerned governments to match their words of condemnation with action.”

To view the Human Rights Watch news release, “Burma: Make Ban’s Visit Meaningful” please visit:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/07/01/burma-make-ban-s-visit-meaningful

To view the Human Rights Watch news release, “Burma: Free Aung San Suu Kyi” please visit:
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/05/14/burma-free-aung-san-suu-kyi

For more information, please contact:
In Thailand, David Mathieson (English): +66-87-176-2205 (mobile)
In London, Brad Adams (English): +44-20-7713-2767; or +44-79-0872-8333 (mobile)
In New York, Elaine Pearson (English): +1-212-216-1213; or +1-646-291-7169 (mobile)
In Washington, DC, Sophie Richardson (English, Mandarin): +1-202-612-4341; or +1-917-721-7473 (mobile)
In Thailand, Sunai Phasuk (English, Thai): +66-81-632-3052 (mobile)

(YANGOON) — The trial of Burma’s democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was expected to conclude Tuesday with the defense given the final statement in a case that has drawn international condemnation, her lawyer said.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate stands accused of violating terms of her house arrest by feeding and providing shelter to an American intruder — John William Yettaw — who swam to her lakeside home uninvited and stayed for two days. (Read “Ban Ki-Moon Leaves Burma Disappointed.”)

Suu Kyi is widely expected to be convicted and faces a possible five years in prison, although there has been speculation she may stay under house arrest rather than serve time in jail.

But defense lawyer Nyan Win said before the start of Tuesday’s session that he held out hope for a court verdict in Suu Kyi’s favor. “We are confident that we will win the case if things go according to the law.”

Suu Kyi and three other defendants will reply to arguments presented Monday by prosecutor Myint Kyaing, the lawyer said.

Diplomats from Japan, Singapore, Thailand and the United States were allowed to attend the trial Tuesday, one of the diplomats said, citing embassy protocol for speaking on condition of anonymity.

Suu Kyi won London-based Amnesty International’s highest award Monday for her defense of human rights, underscoring international support for her struggle to bring democracy to the military-ruled country.

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US President Obama shares a word with French President Sarkozy during group photo of G8 and G5 leaders in L’Aquila, Italy, 09 Jul 2009
Major industrialized nations have issued a call for Burma to free all political prisoners, including pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Leaders from the Group of Eight welcomed the United Nations secretary-general’s efforts to communicate the international concerns to Burma’s military government.

But the G8 statement said Burma’s military leaders failed to take the opportunity of Ban Ki-moon’s visit to the country to respond to those concerns.

The declaration said there is an urgent need for an inclusive process of dialogue and national reconciliation that will lead to what it called “transparent, fair and democratic multiparty elections.”

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