Myanmar Clamps Down on Nobel Winner, Envoy Says

Myanmar’s military government has toughened its treatment of dissident leader Aung San Suu Kyi since she won the Nobel Peace Prize, a Western diplomat said Saturday after returning from the country.

Michel Geuens, Belgian ambassador to Myanmar (formerly Burma) and Bangladesh, said officials deny that Suu Kyi is sick or on a hunger strike. Anti-government groups say that Suu Kyi, under house arrest since 1989, is seriously ill.

Geuens said the government did not let him visit Suu Kyi, 46, who won the Nobel Prize last month.

“I think the Peace Prize has made her house arrest condition stricter. For instance, the two ladies living with her were allowed to go out for shopping before the award was announced. Now they are forbidden,” Geuens said.

Geuens met Gen. Than Shwe, deputy chairman of Myanmar’s State Law and Order Restoration Committee, and other senior officials Wednesday.

“They told me she is something like a terrorist . . . has close contacts with soldiers and she is a highly disturbing element in the politics of the country,” he said.

“They don’t even mention her by name. They talk about her as ‘the person you are referring to’ and things like that,” Geuens said. “There is no way to know anything about Aung San Suu Kyi. She is in absolute incommunicado.”

The ambassador said people passing Suu Kyi’s house used to hear her playing the piano or see her exercising in the garden.

“Now they hear no sound of piano, nor is she seen in the garden anymore,” he said.