Don’t Predict Guilty Verdict in Suu Kyi Trial, Warns Myanmar

Within a day of democratic leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s mumbling in court  terming ruling in her case “painfully obvious”, Myanmar’s junta-run media has warned against any prediction of guilty verdict in the trial describing it as amounting to contempt of court and suggested the democracy leader had violated the law.

In an editorial, New Light of Myanmar newspaper, the government mouthpiece, said that foreign media had shown “bias towards the accused” in the course of the two month trial at a notorious prison where she is kept captive.

On Tuesday, lawyers gave their closing arguments in the high-profile proceedings against Suu Kyi, who is accused of violating the terms of her house arrest by harboring an American who swam uninvited to her lakeside home and stayed for two days. The 64-year-old Nobel Peace laureate faces a jail term of five years. They said that they would hand down a verdict on Friday.

The newspaper’s Internet version published a list of types of contempt of court, saying that Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy had made “political profit” from the internationally condemned case.

“Please read the above three points on contempt of court carefully. There should be no prediction that who is guilty or who is not guilty until the court passes the judgment,” the editorial said. The editorial then alleged that Suu Kyi could have called for security when Yettaw was discovered at the house but instead she “received the intruder” for two nights and provided him with food, lodging and clothes.