Suu Kyi turns 62 in isolation

---

YANGON, Jun 19 (Reuters): Myanmar opposition leader and democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi spent another birthday under house arrest Tuesday as her supporters released doves and balloons to accompany prayers for her release.
To mark her 62nd birthday, around 300 supporters gathered at the dilapidated headquarters of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), which won an election landslide victory in 1990 only to be denied power by the military junta.
The NLD reiterated its demand for the immediate and unconditional release of Suu Kyi, as well as the other 1,100 political prisoners believed to be behind bars in the former Burma.
As with countless other pleas on countless other "milestones" during Suu Kyi's 17 years of on-off detention, it is certain to fall on deaf ears.
Plain-clothes security police, their long-lens cameras clicking away, kept close watch over the NLD ceremony from across the road.
A dozen trucks filled with members of the Union Solidarity and Development Association -- the official name of the junta's political wing -- sat nearby.
In Manila, 20 people protested outside the Myanmar embassy, and there were similar scenes in New Delhi on Monday evening.
However, there were no demonstrations in Thailand, the traditional centre of the Myanmar dissident movement, for fear of repercussions from the military regime now in charge in Bangkok.
Suu Kyi's confinement in her lakeside home in Yangon was extended for another year in May despite international pleas to the generals to end her latest detention, which began in 2003.
The Nobel peace laureate has now been confined for more than 11 of the past 17 years, with her telephone line cut and no visitors allowed apart from her maid and doctor.
"In our view, until their constitution is ratified, she will not be released," said Sann Aung, a Bangkok-based leader of the government-in-exile set up after the junta ignored the 1990 election results.
"They are worried that she will be a threat to the National Convention and the referendum," he said, referring to the junta's constitution-drafting body which reconvenes for its last session in July.
The generals have promised a referendum on the new constitution and eventual elections, but refused to set a timetable. Critics call it a sham aimed at entrenching military control over Myanmar's 54 million people.
Sanctions imposed by the West have had little effect on the military, which has ruled Myanmar in various guises since 1962.
But neither has the soft diplomacy employed by Myanmar's partners in the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), which has been embarrassed by the junta's intransigence.
"Today, Burma is the black sheep of ASEAN," Thailand's Nation newspaper said in an editorial. "As long as Aung San Suu Kyi remains incarcerated, ASEAN's reputation and the group's international standing will be tarnished."