BURMA:Burma's military junta said yesterday that detained opposition leader and Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi deserved to be beaten like an errant child for threatening national security.
Seeking to justify her latest stretch of house arrest, now in its sixth year, official newspapers said Ms Suu Kyi (62) and other detainees had been in contact with and had received cash from rebel guerrillas and foreign governments.
"Due to the crimes they have committed, they well deserve flogging punishment as in the case of naughty children," the papers said in editorials thought to reflect the thinking of the junta's top brass.
The editorials added that the government was behaving like the "parent of the people" and exercising "great patience". It detained Ms Suu Kyi and others "in order that they will not be in a position to commit similar crimes again", they said.
Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won more than 80 per cent of seats in a 1990 election, only to be denied power by a military that has ruled since a 1962 coup.
As the daughter of independence hero Aung San, she exercises enormous personal political influence. -