The Nobel Peace Prize awards committee issued a rare public statement Friday to condemn the imprisonment of 1991 peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and to demand her immediate release.
The 63-year-old opposition leader was jailed on Thursday on charges of violating her house arrest. She has spent 13 of the past 19 years in detention without trial for her nonviolent promotion of democracy.
The secretive Nobel committee traditionally does not comment on past laureates. However, its non-voting secretary Geir Lundestad said they are deeply concerned about Suu Kyi and had made earlier appeals on her behalf.
"We sent this because it is a matter of the life and health of a laureate," Lundestad told The Associated Press.
The five-member committee said in the statement that it "protests strongly against the way in which the government of Myanmar (Burma) has treated Aung San Suu Kyi. Her recent detention in prison is totally unacceptable. She has done nothing wrong."
Suu Kyi and her National League for Democracy won national elections in 1990, but the military junta refused to relinquish power. She was not able to attend her Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony because she was under house arrest, so her son Alexander Aris accepted the prize for her in 1991.
"The unacceptable treatment of her has to come to an immediate end. Recent reports about Aung San Suu Kyi's health are of great concern. We demand that she be given the necessary medical assistance without delay," said the Nobel committee.
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