Myanmar Junta to Allow Visits by Detained Nobelist’s Family

The military government said Saturday that it would allow the family of detained opposition leader and Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi to visit her.

It also announced it had freed a former prime minister and 11 other political prisoners.

The announcements on state radio came one day after the ruling military junta said that political detainees who pose no threat to state security would soon be freed.

One U.S. scholar, however, questioned the junta’s sincerity, saying it may be making the conciliatory gestures merely to placate international criticism of its human rights record.

Myanmar has been under virtual martial law since September, 1988, when a military coup ousted a month-old civilian government. The coup came after almost a year of public unrest.

Suu Kyi, one of the leaders of the opposition National League for Democracy, has been under house arrest since July, 1989, for allegedly “endangering the state.”

Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her nonviolent activism.

She is not known to have seen any outsiders besides her personal maid, doctors and representatives of the junta for many months.

However, state radio said Suu Kyi’s husband, Briton Michael Aris, and their two sons would be allowed into Myanmar to visit her but did not give further details. It was not clear whether any conditions were attached.

Among the political prisoners released was former Prime Minister U Nu, who had headed a parallel government formed after the 1988 coup. U was put under house arrest in December, 1989.

Four other members of the parallel government who had been under house arrest were also released, as were seven other political prisoners.