Bad Birthday In Burma

As Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi spent her 58th birthday behind bars, people around the world condemned the ruling junta. Protests came from Washington, London and the E.U. as the Nobel laureate and democracy activist spent her third week in custody, putting the junta on the defensive.

"We don't have any animosity toward Aung San Suu Kyi," said Burma's Foreign Minister Win Aung at the Asian Regional Forum meeting in Phnom Penh, where Burma's neighbors took the unusual step of collectively asking for eased restrictions on Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy. "We have loving-kindness to everybody — even creatures, animals."

Loving-kindness is not the usual treatment for inmates at Burma's notorious Insein Jail, where British Foreign Office Minister Mike O'Brien said Suu Kyi is currently being held. "It is totally unacceptable that she should be detained in this manner," he said. While supporters held ceremonies in temples to mark her birthday last Thursday, Suu Kyi herself had nothing to celebrate. "I understand she continues to wear the clothes in which she was arrested," lamented O'Brien.