The Myanmar government has hinted that in six months’ time the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi could be set free from house arrest because the prevalent laws permit maximum detention for a period of six years. 

George Yeo, the Foreign Minister of Singapore said that Nyan Win, his Myanmar counterpart has stated that Suu Kyi has ‘about half a year’s time left’. When George Yeo was queried whether it inferred that Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi would be set free, he replied, ‘I think that is not an inaccurate inference’. Suu Kyi has already spent 13 years in detention since 1989.

The foreign minister of Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) appealed to the ruling Junta in Myanmar on Sunday, July 20, to release Suu Kyi and other political prisoners. The ministers of the 10-member Asean voiced their dismay over the prolonged house arrest of the Myanmar opposition leader on the eve of the formal start of the 41st Asean ministerial meetings in Singapore. George Yeo said, ‘The foreign ministers expressed their deep disappointment that Aung San Suu Kyi’s detention under house arrest had been extended by the Myanmar government.’