An American man has been arrested to sneak Daw Aung Suu Kyi

U.S. Man Held After Swim to Burmese Nobel Peace Laureate’s Home

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By MARK McDONALD
Published: May 7, 2009

HONG KONG — An American man has been arrested for swimming across a lake to sneak into the home of the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, a U.S. diplomat said Thursday from Yangon.

Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader who has been under house arrest for 13 of the past 19 years, is rarely allowed visitors by Myanmar’s ruling military junta. The street to her lakeside home in the University section of Yangon, the commercial capital formerly known as Rangoon, is blocked by police barricades and checkpoints.

The state-run Myanma Ahlin newspaper said the man reportedly confessed to swimming across Inya Lake on Sunday evening. He was arrested early Wednesday as he was swimming back.

It was not known for certain if the man had actually gotten into Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi’s house — one of several buildings in her residential compound — or if he had contacted her.

The newspaper identified the man as John William Yeattaw and said the authorities had confiscated an American passport, a black backpack, a pair of pliers, a camera and two $100 bills.

There were no immediately verifiable details about the man’s identity or his purpose, but the American diplomat, Richard Mei, confirmed Thursday evening that the man had been arrested and that American consular officials were trying to see him.

Foreign visitors, even senior diplomats, are not given permission to visit Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi at home. In February, she was allowed to leave her residence to meet briefly with Ibrahim Gambari, the United Nations special envoy to Myanmar, at a government guest house.

Her current term of house arrest began in May 2003 after her motorcade, traveling near the northern town of Depayin, was attacked by a mob -- with dozens of reported fatalities -- in what some analysts believe was an assassination attempt. Her detention is due to end later this month, although annual extensions of her house arrest have become routine.

Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, 63, was first detained in 1989. She won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.