STORIES
The murder that took 16 years to solve
The slaying of Rachel Nickell led to an injustice
By David Cocksedge
It was a bright summer morning on Wimbledon Common in south-west London. A man bent on violent death was stalking his prey. A woman named Rachel Nickell was out with her 2-year-old son Alex walking the family dog named Molly on Wednesday 15 July 1992. Soon after 11am that day she was attacked by a homicidal maniac as she walked through a wooded thicket close to the famous windmill and Queensmere pond on the west side of the ancient common.
As the dog fled, the attacker threw Alex aside, stabbed Rachel 49 times as he raped her, then slashed her throat and left her to die. A passer-by found little Alex clinging to his mother’s blood-soaked body, frantically repeating the words, “Wake up, Mummy!” It was a truly horrifying ordeal for the toddler, mentally scarring him for life, and a crime that shocked and horrified the entire country.
Pathologists later determined that Rachel, a former model born in Bromley, Kent on 23 November 1968, took around 12 minutes to die, choking in agony as her young son looked on helplessly. Scotland Yard officers of London’s Metropolitan Police took over the investigation from local law-enforcement officers as the brutal murder became television and headline news all over Britain.
Thirty-two men were arrested in connection with the crime, and over 3,000 interviewed including Rachel’s partner, Andre Hanscombe, a motorcycle courier, and father to Alex. The massive police investigation soon targeted Colin Stagg (32) an unemployed local man who lived in nearby Roehampton, and had allegedly been seen close to the murder scene that morning. Under interrogation, Stagg was unable to account for all his movements that day. But he was the sort of oddball crank that profilers love to label potential killers: he was a disciple of Wicca, a pagan religion predating Christianity by centuries. He was also a loner and a self-confessed virgin who had sexual fantasies and a minor sex conviction on his record. Being somewhat runt-like and often unshaven, he even looked like the typical image of a stalker.
As there was no scientific or forensic evidence linking Stagg to the scene of the crime, police asked criminal psychologist Paul Britton to create an ‘offender profile’ of the killer. They decided that Stagg fitted the profile and asked Britton to assist in designing a covert sting operation, known as ‘Operation Ezdell’ to see if Stagg would either eliminate or implicate himself with Rachel Nickell’s murder. This operation would later be criticised by the media and Stagg’s trial judge, Mr Justice Ognall, as a ‘honey trap’, a device extensively used in the secret world of international spying.
The ill-advised sting operation was ordered by Superintendent Bassett and Chief Inspector Wickerson and run by Inspector Keith Pedder. Using the pseudonym ‘Lizzie James’ an attractive undercover policewoman from SO10, (the Metropolitan Police Special Operations Group) contacted Stagg, posing as a friend of a woman with whom he had met through a lonely-hearts column. Over a period of five months ‘Lizzie’ attempted to obtain information from Stagg by feigning a romantic interest.
Stagg was a lonely man and was very quickly flattered by her interest in him. They met many times, spoke on the telephone to each other almost daily and exchanged letters containing sexual fantasies. During a meeting in London’s Hyde Park, they talked extensively about the Nickell murder, which Stagg admitted had fascinated him as it has taken place very close to where he lived, and he had been questioned about it by local police. Later he claimed that he had only played along with the topic because he wanted to pursue the blossoming ‘romance’ between them.
Britton later claimed that he disagreed with the use of fantasy-filled letters and knew nothing of them until after they had been sent. Meantime ‘Lizzie’ won Stagg’s confidence and drew out his violent fantasies, but Colin Stagg did not admit to the murder.
Police released a taped conversation between them in which she ‘confessed’ to enjoy hurting people. Stagg mumbled his reply: “Please explain, Liz. I live a quiet life. If I have disappointed you, please don’t dump me. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.” It was clear that Stagg was by now deeply smitten with the attractive blonde, whom he had never suspected was in fact a police officer on a mission to entrap him.
‘Lizzie’ went on to say, “If only you had done the Wimbledon Common murder; if only you had killed her; it would be all right.”
Stagg replied, “I’m terribly sorry, but I haven’t.”
In spite of this clear denial, Met police officers decided to bring the hammer down on Colin Stagg. Acting on the advice of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) that there was sufficient evidence to convict Stagg, investigating officers arrested and charged him in November 1992 with the murder of Rachel Nickell. Stagg was now headline news and his appearance at the committal proceedings at Wimbledon Magistrates Court turned into a media scrum.
During the committal hearing Britton claimed that Operation Ezdell was meant to present the subject with a series of psychological ‘ladders’ to climb rather than s ‘slippery slope’ down which a vulnerable person would slide if pushed. The defence argued that Britton’s evidence was speculative and supported only by his intuition.
Britton claimed that he did not have anything to do with Stagg’s initial interrogation at the time of his first arrest, soon after the murder (after which Stagg was released) but only the undercover operation, leading up to Stagg’s second arrest when charges were brought.
Inspector Keith Pedder however disputes this. He claims that “before starting the interviews, I called Paul Britton at the Towers Hospital in Leicester and asked if he could give any specific advice as to how I should approach him (Stagg)”. Pedder also claimed that this consultation process went on throughout the three days that Stagg was initially held and interrogated. “Throughout the interviews, as and when Mr Stagg’s behaviour appeared to be contradictory, and in some cases downright confusing, I would ring Mr Britton, and according to him, Stagg’s denials were indicative of his cunning and basic intelligence.”
Scotland Yard officers, under intense pressure to bring a swift conclusion to the case, were certain that they had their man in Colin Stagg. Considering the severity of the crime, he was held in remand and denied bail. At least whilst in prison he was free of intense media scrutiny and persecution.
But when the case reached London’s Old Bailey in August 1993, Mr Justice Ognall judged that the police had shown ‘excessive zeal’, and had tried to incriminate a suspect by “deceptive conduct of the grossest kind.” The entrapment evidence was excluded and the prosecution thus forced to withdraw its case. The police however announced that they were not looking for other suspects in this case; thus fuelling the general impression that Stagg was a killer who had managed to beat the rap on a technicality.
An internal review estimated that the pursuit of Stagg had cost the Metropolitan Police over £3 million, and that vital scientific evidence had been either missed or mislaid in a badly bungled investigation. On legal advice, Stagg then filed for compensatory and punitive damages totalling £1 million for the 14 months he had spent in custody. The WPC involved in the case known as ‘Lizzie James’ also later sued her employers for undue stress and was eventually awarded £135,000 in damages.
Stagg again became headline news in April 1995 when he was charged with carrying an offensive weapon (a hatchet) following an altercation with another dog-walker named John Roberts on Wimbledon Common. In lurid banner headlines, the tabloid press reminded us that he had been the man accused of murdering Ms Nickell.
Scotland Yard came under pressure annually on the anniversary of the murder for progress and under new management officers began to collate evidence and files related to the case. In 2002, ten years after Rachel’s death, the police used a ‘cold case’ review team which was able to use refined DNA techniques only recently invented.
Then in July 2003, it was reported that after tests on Ms Nickell’s clothes, scientists had found a male DNA sample which did not match her partner or her son. The sample at the time was insufficient to confirm an identity, but large enough to rule out suspects – including Colin Stagg.
In 2006 Nick Cohen commented in his column in ‘The Observer’ (the British one!) that the inaccurate reporting of the case – and, in particular, frequent suggestions by the tabloid press that Stagg was guilty – certainly stemmed from too close a relationship between the police and the media. Finally on 13 August 2008, Stagg’s solicitor announced that the compensation had been set by Lord Brennan QC and accepted by Stagg in the amount of £706,000.
In November 2004, police suddenly announced a new lead in the Nickell murder case. They had finally scored with some reliable forensic evidence. By July 2006, detectives had interviewed a murderer and sex offender named Robert Napper at Broadmoor Hospital in Berkshire, 35 miles west of London. Napper had been convicted of killing Samantha Bissett and her 4-year-old daughter Jazmine at Plumstead in November 1993; and was strongly suspected to be the infamous ‘Green Chain’ serial rapist, who had carried out 106 sexual assaults of women in the Greater London area between 1989 and 1994. The 40-year-old man, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic and suffering from Asperger syndrome, had been held at the secure institute for over ten years.
Robert Clive Napper was born in Erith, Kent on 15 February 1966, the eldest son of Brian Napper and Pauline Lasham. His childhood was blighted by epic fights between his parents and sexual abuse by a family friend in 1976, when he was ten years old. He grew into a reticent teenager who bullied his brother and spied on his sister as she undressed. His sexual deviancy progressed from ‘flashing’ and voyeurism to rape and murder as he grew into his twenties and lived alone in Plumstead, south-east London.
Again, the criminal pursuit of Robert Napper was marred by official bungling. He confessed to his mother that he had committed a rape on Plumstead Common in 1989, but police did not follow up on this when she reported it because the rape had actually occurred in a house nearby and went unreported by the victim.
When an E-fit poster of the Green Chain rapist was released in August 1992, a neighbour and work colleague both implicated Robert Napper. After being questioned, the suspect twice failed to report to a police station and provide a DNA sample, because he knew this modern forensic evidence would link him to the assaults. Napper was then eliminated as a suspect in the case because he is 1.88 metres tall, when police were seeking a man believed to be about 1.75m tall, based on eye witness reports of victims.
Napper was arrested in April 1993 for illegal possession of a firearm, but after serving two months in prison, he was free to commit the brutal slaying of Samantha and Jazmine Bissett in November, stabbing the mother 20 times as he raped her. The murder scene there was so horrific that a police photographer who attended was so disturbed that he was unable to work again for two months.
But detectives now had DNA evidence to link Napper to the cold case murder of Rachel Nickell, and he was charged with this crime on 28 November 2007. He appeared at City of Westminster Magistrates Court on 4 December, pleading ‘Not Guilty’, and the case went to trial in November 2008.
On 18 December 2008, Robert Napper finally pleaded guilty to the manslaughter of Ms. Nickell on the grounds of diminished responsibility. This was an obvious ‘plea bargain’ deal. Napper’s psychiatrist, Natalie Pyszora, told the court that “his intent was to find a woman for violent sex and he travelled to Wimbledon Common that day armed with a knife.” His state of mind had been ‘psychotic’ and his two mental conditions – paranoid schizophrenia and Asperger’s syndrome – “gave him the feeling that he was superhuman and untouchable.”
The man seen washing blood off his hands and face by a stream flowing down to Queensmere pond on Wimbledon Common at around 11.30am on 15 July 1992 had been Robert Napper, not Colin Stagg. There was a clear difference in size between the two men – Napper is 12 centimetres taller than Stagg; but the man had been crouching down by the water when a witness saw him.
Justice Griffiths Williams said that Napper would be held indefinitely at Broadmoor Hospital because he was “an extremely dangerous man.”
Meantime, Colin Stagg received a full apology from London’s Metropolitan Police. Assistant Commissioner John Yates told a throng of reporters outside the Old Bailey, “In August 1993, Mister Stagg was wrongly accused of Rachel’s murder. It is now clear that he is completely innocent of any involvement in that case. I today apologise to him for the mistakes that were made and we also recognise the huge and lasting impact that this case has had on his life, and on behalf of the Metropolitan Police today I have sent him a full written apology.”
Following a bitter dispute with Rachel’s parents in 1995, Andre Hanscombe withdrew with his son to a remote area of France to escape intrusive media attention. Young Alex is now 19 years old, and a fluent French speaker. But he still suffers from occasional nightmares of his mother’s violent death on Wimbledon Common back in July 1992.
After years of bungling, Metropolitan Police detectives had at last been able to bring closure to this troubling case with the conviction of Robert Napper. But it had taken all of 16 years and five months after Ms Nickell met her death whilst innocently walking with her son and her dog on a bright summer morning on Wimbledon Common.
Next month: Colin Ireland, ‘The Fairy Liquidator’
True Crimes Listing
True Crime stories published in the Observer:
2002
April –The Green Bicycle case; May – The Craig/Bentley Case; June – The A6 Murder Case; July – Murder of the Earl of Errol; August – The O J Simpson Murder Trial; September – Aileen Wuornos, female serial killer; October – Ronald Opus; November – Madame X; December – The Spree Killer (Chris Wilder)
2003
January – Shootout at Smiths’ Club; February – The Christine Dryland Case; March – Poisoned Pie in Essex; April – Massacre at Lidice; May – The Diana Davidson Murder Case; June – The death of Alkibiades; July – The Headsman of Colmar; August – Ruth Ellis; September – The Mel Jones Murder Case; October – George Smith, the bath murderer; November – Murder in a combat zone - Vietnam 1966; December – The Barn Restaurant Case
2004
January – The assassination of JFK; February – Judge Falcone and the Mafia; March – Gilles de Rais/Bluebeard; April – The hand in the sand case (New Zealand); May – The Hong Kong drugs murder Case; June and July – Jack the Ripper parts 1 & 2; August – Murder at Farleigh Court; September – London’s Bonnie & Clyde; October – Ruth Snyder Case; November – Death of a rock star (Jim Morrison); December – Torso in the Thames
2005
January – Murder in the Red Barn; February – Gangland double cross; March – Fatal Attraction in Ulster; April – Guernica; May – Bonnie & Clyde (USA); June – Murder of Jill Dando; July – Pedro Lopez, Monster of the Andes; August – Deadly Aperitif; September – Henry VIII & his wives; October – Sid & Nancy; November – The real Dracula; December – Poolan Devi, India’s Bandit Queen
2006
January and February – Charles Sobhraj parts 1& 2; March – Marilyn Monroe; April – The Yorkshire Ripper (Peter Sutcliffe); May – Mass murderer Ted Bundy; June – 10 Rillington Place (Reg Christie); July – Son of Sam (David Berkowitz); August – Tasmania’s Aborigines; September – The Nuremberg Trials; October – Watergate; November – Charlie Manson & his Angels; December – Assassination of Heydrich
2007
January – Betty Broderick Case; February – Fred & Rosemary West; March – Billy The Kid; April – Ned Kelly; May – Assassination of Anwar Sadat; June – Assassination of Robert Kennedy; July – Assassination of Gandhi; August - Halabja; September - Amritsar; October – Trials of Oscar Wilde; November – The Dreyfus Affair; December – Trial of Stephen Ward
2008
January – John Stonehouse; February – Rinkagate; March – Sir Walter Raleigh; April – Assassination of Abraham Lincoln; May – Execution of King Charles I; June – Wild Bill Hickok; July – Gary Powers; August – Terror at the 1972 Munich Olympics; September – The Borgias; October – Ted Kennedy & Mary Jo Kopechne; November – Guy Fawkes; December – Massacre at Wounded Knee;
2009
January – Charles Starkweather & Caril Fugate, ‘Natural Born Killers; February – Dick Turpin; March – King Farouk; April – Elizabeth Bathory; May – Assassination of Spencer Perceval; June – The mysterious death of Superman (George Reeves); July – The Rachel Nickell murder case; August - Colin Ireland, ‘The Fairy Liquidator’; September – Jeffrey Dahmer, American cannibal; October - ‘Blackbeard the Pirate’ (Edward Teach); November – Death of Robert Maxwell; December – The assassination of John Lennon
2010
January – Caravaggio the painter; February - Ted Kaczynski, The Unabomber; March – A stranger in the night; April – The Brighton trunk murders; May – Freddie Mills, suicide or murder; June – Leonard Lake & Charles Ng, spree killers of North Calofornia
First Lady of Burma
Aung San Suu Kyi has been detained since 1989
She resides under house arrest in a decaying colonial-style building on University Avenue in the middle of Inya Lake in Rangoon (Yangon), formerly the capital city of Burma (or Myanmar as it is now known). She is a widow, and a Theravada Buddhist, so she accepts her fate calmly and without rancour. This amazingly brave, frail-looking woman with an almost mystical, sad beauty is the most famous prisoner on earth today.
She is frequently referred to as ‘Daw’ which is an honorific similar to the term ‘Madam’ reserved for older, revered women in Asia. The literal meaning is ‘Aunt’. It is acceptable to refer to her as ‘Ms. Suu Kyi’ of ‘Doctor Suu Kyi’, since those syllables serve to distinguish her from her father, General Aung San, still considered to be the father of modern-day Burma, a country of 56 million people in the biggest nation (by area) in mainland South East Asia.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was back in the news again last May. The ruling military junta in Burma put her on trial in a bid to extend her term of house arrest, which is illegal under international and domestic law. The Pro-Democracy activist and founder/leader of the National League for Democracy in Myanmar has become a world famous prisoner of conscience and a staunch advocate of non-violent resistance.
The United Nations Working Group for Arbitrary Detention has rendered an Opinion (number 9 of 2004) that her deprivation of liberty was arbitrary, as being in contravention of Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, and requested that authorities in Myanmar set her free. The military junta has so far completely ignored this request.
Dr Suu Kyi was born on 19 June 1945 in Rangoon, one of three children. The family history has been steeped in tragedy. Her younger brother Aung San Lin drowned in a pool accident in 1953; and her elder brother immigrated to San Diego, California and has since become a US citizen. Suu Kyi was educated in English Catholic schools for much of her childhood in Burma before going on to earn degrees at New Delhi, India and Oxford University in England. Her father ironically founded the modern Burmese army and negotiated Burma’s independence from Britain in 1947, but was assassinated by political rivals in Rangoon on 19 July that same year.
Her mother, Daw Khin Kyi, gained prominence as a political figure in the newly-formed Burmese government in 1948, and was appointed Burmese ambassador to India and Nepal in 1960. Ms Aung Suu followed her there, graduating with a degree in politics in New Delhi in 1964, aged 19. She continued her higher education at St. Hugh’s College at Oxford, obtaining a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1969 and a Ph.D at the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London in 1985. She met her future husband, Dr Michael Aris, an expert on Tibet, whilst at Oxford, and they married on 1 January 1972. She gave birth to their first son; Alexander Aris in London in 1973, and their second son (Kim) was born in 1977.
In On 31 March 1988 Ms. Suu Kyi returned to Burma at first to nurse her ailing mother and then later to lead the Pro-Democracy movement which favoured non-violent protest against the brutal military dictatorship of the country, much as Mahatma Ghandi opposed British rule in India for many years. The country was ready for change when General Ne Win, the military dictator of Burma since 1962, resigned on 23 July that year. At exactly 8 minutes past 8am on 8 August 1988 (an auspicious date for Asians) a mass uprising began throughout the country.
The well-organised series of strikes and protests continued until it was suppressed by heavily-armed troops of the junta, who fired on crowds of unarmed civilians, killing thousands. Amnesty International has estimated that around 3,000 people were killed during ‘Bloody August’ in Rangoon alone. Many officials of the Pro-Democracy Movement were either murdered or imprisoned, where they were held without trial, and many of them still remain in custody.
After her mother died in December 1988, Ms Suu Kyi vowed that she too would serve the people of Burma. In April 1989 she bravely walked through a cordon of soldiers pointing automatic rifles at her in the Irrawaddy Delta after nationwide street protests had led to many more Burmese being killed. Following this incident, she was placed under house arrest on 20 July 1989. The following year the ruling junta allowed her to stand for election as Prime Minister, and was astonished when she was elected by a landslide (her party, the NLD, won 82% of the parliamentary seats) on 27 May 1990. The generals had totally underestimated her popularity with the Burmese people, in spite of blatant attempts by the military to rig the vote.
With colossal but sadly predictable arrogance, the SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council) simply refused to recognise the results and returned her to house arrest following further rioting in Rangoon.
On 14 October, 1991 the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo awarded her the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize which was collected in her name by her sons Alexander and Kim on 10 December 1991. She used the 1.3 million dollars prize money to establish a health and education trust for the Burmese people and was (inevitably) criticised by the state-run media for spending the money abroad.
Sadly, Michael’s visit in Christmas 1995 turned out to be the last time that she saw her husband, as she remained in Burma to lead the movement and the military dictatorship denied him any further entry visas. Dr Michael Aris was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997 which was later found to be terminal. Despite appeals from prominent figures and organisations, including the USA, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Pope John Paul II, the Burmese government would not grant him even a tourist visa, stating that they did not have the facilities to care for him.
The generals instead urged Daw Suu Kyi to leave the country to visit him. She was at that time free from house arrest but was unwilling to depart, fearing that she would not be allowed back into Burma. Perhaps wisely she did not trust the junta’s assurances that she could return.
Dr Michael Aris died in London on 27 March 1999 without his wife by his side. Though this was a terribly painful time for her, Daw Suu Kyi and the world knew that she was now wedded to a higher purpose – gaining the freedom of the people of Burma. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown wrote, ‘Suu Kyi’s courage is the courage to sacrifice her own happiness and a comfortable life so that, through her struggle, she might win the right of an entire nation to seek better living conditions. It is the absolute expression of selflessness. Paradoxically, in sacrificing her own liberty, she strengthens its cry and bolsters its claim for the people she represents.’
The United Nations has often attempted to facilitate dialogue between the ruling junta and Daw Suu Kyi. On 6 May 2002, following secret confidence-building negotiations led by the UN, the ruling military junta released her. A government spokesman said that she was free to move about the country “because we are confident that we can trust each other”. Ms Suu Kyi proclaimed “a new dawn for Burma”, but on 30 May 2003, a government-sponsored mob attacked her caravan in the northern village of Depayin, murdering and wounding many of her loyal supporters.
Ms Suu Kyi fled the bloody scene with the help of her driver, Ko Kyaw Soe Lin, but was arrested on reaching the town of Ye-U. The government then incarcerated her at Insein Prison in Rangoon, charging her with deliberately disrupting the peace in rural Myanmar. After she underwent surgery (a hysterectomy) in September 2003, the government again placed her under house arrest at her decaying family home in Rangoon.
Peaceful demonstrations by Buddhist monks in September 2007 again led to violent suppression by the state. It was all eerily similar to protests by monks in South Vietnam in 1962/63, demonstrating against the corrupt regime of President Ngo Dinh Diem, who was eventually abandoned even by his American cronies in the Central Intelligence Agency prior to his assassination in Saigon on 2 November 1963.
In December 2007, the US House of Representatives voted unanimously (400 to 0) to award her the Congressional Gold Medal, and the US Senate concurred in the following month. She is the first recipient in American history to receive the prize whilst imprisoned. Other non-American recipients of the medal include Sir Winston Churchill, Pope John Paul II, Nelson Mandela, the Dalai Lama and Mother Theresa.
On 2 May 2008, after Cyclone Nargis hit Myanmar, Ms Suu Kyi lost her much of her roof and was living in virtual darkness after the electricity failed in her dilapidated lakeside residence. She used candles at night as she has never been provided with a generator. The cyclone wreaked havoc in a nation with the worst human rights record in the world and 138,000 Burmese people perished.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has been placed under house arrest on numerous occasions since she began her political career, totalling 13 of the past 19 years. During these periods she has been prevented from meeting her party supporters and international visitors; and they have been prevented from seeing her. She lives with two maids and receives periodic visits from her doctor. In an interview in 2003, Ms Suu Kyi has said that whilst under house arrest she reads books on philosophy, political discussion and biographies of famous people that her late husband sent her. She also stated that she misses her many friends in the Pro-Democracy Movement.
The domestic and international media has also been prevented from visiting her. In 1998 journalist Maurizio Giuliano was allowed to meet and photograph her but he was stopped by customs officials at Rangoon’s airport and all his films, tapes and notes were duly confiscated before he was allowed to fly out of the country.
When Daw Suu Kyi met the current dictator of Myanmar, General Than Shwe in September 1994, the general informed her that she was being held under the 1975 State Protection Act (Article 10b), which grants the government the power to imprison persons for up to five years without trial; and airily dismissed her claims that this emergency order is illegal under all definitions of international law.
It seems that the unelected military government of Burma/Myanmar can frame any laws it deems fit simply to continue in power whilst closing down universities (“hot beds of dissent”, according to Than Shwe) and using political prisoners and Burmese peasants as slave labour to build the new capital city of Naypyidaw and other tourist attractions in the hope that foreign tourists will soon flock to Myanmar.
Meantime, many nations and famous people (including UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, former American Presidents Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W Bush) have continued to call for her release and that of the 2,100 other political prisoners still being held without trial in the country.
The world was reminded of Daw Suu Kyi and her sad fate again son after 3 May 2009 when a middle-aged American named John William Yettaw (53) swam across Inya Lake to her house, using home-made flippers (fins) attached to his feet. He had not been invited, but was allowed to stay for two nights while he recovered from exhaustion. On 13 May, Suu Kyi was arrested for violating the terms of her house arrest. She and her two maids were taken to Insein Prison and her trial began on 18 May. Her defence attorneys stated, quite reasonably, that as SLORC guards posted to watch her home had been negligent in not arresting Mr Yattaw, she surely could not be at fault for temporarily granting shelter to an uninvited visitor and allowing him to stay out of common hospitality and a natural concern for his health.
Mr Yattaw was also put on trial, accused of ‘embarrassing the country’. He stated that his only aim had been to warn Ms Suu Kyi that her life was in danger. Maybe so, but his mad quixotic mission had served only to damage her very delicate situation and give the military government the perfect excuse it needed to extend her detention.
The junta plans an election in 2010 as part of a ‘road map to democracy’, but this has been criticised by human rights groups as merely a fig leaf cover for a further extension of military rule, which has blighted Burma/Myanmar for 47 years.
During her trial, diplomats from Russia, Thailand and Singapore were allowed to meet Daw Suu Kyi and assure her of worldwide concern for her position and her health. Always polite and courteous to visitors, she thanked them with her usual faultless command of the English language.
Daw Suu Kyi has her critics, both within Burma and in here in Asia. The Burmese Foreign Minister Nyan Win was quoted in the state-run newspaper ‘New Light of Myanmar’ that the swimming incident “was trumped up to intensify international pressure on Myanmar by internal and external anti-government elements who do not wish to see the positive changes in those countries’ policies toward Myanmar.”
On 25 August 2008 Khun Samak Sundaravej, former Prime Minister of Thailand, (and always a pragmatist), told reporters of the ‘Bangkok Post’ that “Europe uses Aung San Suu Kyi as a tool. If it’s not related to her, it is possible to have deeper and meaningful discussions with Myanmar regarding trade and other important issues.”
There is always hypocrisy in politics. Whilst successive American governments continue to stridently denounce Myanmar’s unelected military junta, and Ms Suu Kyi’s illegal detention, note that Burmese soldiers are always seen on news programmes toting M-16 automatic rifles; openly sold to the 400,000-strong Army of Myanmar by US-government approved arms dealers.
In her inspirational book, ‘Freedom from Fear’ (published by Penguin in 1991), Daw Suu Kyi stated, ‘It is not power that corrupts, but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.’
The first lady of Burma remains a beacon of hope to the world and the 56 million people of her country who yearn for an end to military rule.
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