Well, kids, the verdict's in. Aung San Suu Kyi gets 18 months of house arrest, but in a gesture of royal magnanimity, we learn that it was commuted down from a 3-year prison sentence with hard labor. As for the hapless John Yettaw who braved a lake to trespass on her property unleashing one of the best show trials since the Great Purge, he received 7 years hard labor. (Friends in Rangoon long ago joked that they'd rename in his honor University Ave., on which Suu Kyi's lakeside villa sits.)

Surely it didn't have to be this way...?
Predictable outpourings of international condemnations here or here. The usual crowd-- Britain, France, Philippines (Philippines?), Australia, US (with Sec. of State Hilary Clinton weighing in from Goma, Congo).

Oh stop whingeing. By every account inside Burma, there was no possible other outcome. If pretext they needed to keep Aung San Suu Kyi off the streets ahead of elections next year, pretext they found. I am inclined -- because this is a blog -- to turn juvenile and say I told you so. But don't listen to me, listen to my Burmese friends:

"At present, I'm a little lost," said a wise elder whom I'll call a concerned ethnic Karen activist. "Before this incident with the Lady , there was a crack, an opportunity. I saw it as an avenue, a certain step toward gradual change. But now that they behave that way, I don't see how to advocate."

My friend was speaking about the 2010 parliamentary elections, the first since 1990 and nominally intended to implement the terms of a new constitution that gives a civilian face to the junta by guaranteeing 25% of seats go to the military. For an emerging subset of urban intellectuals in Burma, it promised a glimmer of an opening. But the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi, for all its predictability, once more reminded them that opportunities in the face of authoritarianism are slippery. Those who were pondering a run in the elections now hesitate.
Another wise friend of mine in Rangoon was warned weeks ago by a friend in a letter not to campaign. The junta, he was reminded, cannot be trusted.

Trust. It's a word that's virtually synonymous with Aung San Suu Kyi.

But back she goes to her lakeside villa on University Avenue, which is curiously a stone's throw from the Thai and US embassies. So much for speculation in Rangoon that tearing down the barricades around it meant she'd be stowed away in prison. Those who were most irked couldn't understand how security, three layers of such, could have allowed a trespasser through. Yettaw, they told me, had already attempted the swim months before, authorities had been told, and still he was given another visa to enter the country -- an unlikely scenario given that any foreign friend of Suu Kyi's quickly finds themselves on the blacklist of immigration authorities, never more to be permitted into the Golden Land (journalists, alongside US military types and members of the International Labor Organization, are enemy number 1). Thus a thousand conspiracy theories took fire in the back roads of Rangoon -- surely he must've been a plant by the junta, they said, neatly timed to get her in trouble a few weeks before the expiration on May 27 of her most recent stint of house arrest.



Of the condemnations abroad, most pertinent are calls by Europeans and various nonprofits (between a growing surge of demands that Sen. Gen. Than Shwe be hauled before the ICC for crimes against humanity) for a tough stance by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. Despite the absence of Burma's main patron China, ASEAN maintains a certain edge over imperial Westerners for succoring their neighbor with cash in return for precious Burmese resources. Bangkok is all atwinkle with Burmese gas. (It's a running joke in Rangoon, but their evening laughter is more often heard than seen when their generators cut out. )
Not in ASEAN's interests to have mass bloodletting over the border, or else face massive refugee spills. And so... BREAKING NEWS! Thailand, it seems, is pondering just that. Ponder away.