Annals of idiocy

On Aung San Suu Kyi's idiot admirer who swam to her home making an already volatile situation worse...

On the southern shore of Inya Lake, in the middle of Rangoon, there is a large white colonial house in a state of genteel decay. At dusk, the view from across the lake dissolves in a humid mist and the house seems enshrouded in an air of beautiful sadness. The house and its melancholy atmosphere belong to Aung San Suu Kyi, who lives there as a prisoner: the Burmese regime has kept her under house arrest in near-total isolation, surrounded by security police, for thirteen of the past nineteen years. She sees no one except the two relatives who live with her, her doctor, and—every year or two—visiting dignitaries. In September 2007, when monks and other Burmese rose up in peaceful demonstrations for democracy, a handful of monks wishing to pay their respects to the woman all Burmese call the Lady were able to make it as far as her front gate, where Suu Kyi met them with tears in her eyes. Otherwise, year after year she is entirely alone, reading and meditating, her health failing, her slender body wasting away. And yet she remains the single greatest threat to the continued rule of the generals.

A few nights ago, a fifty-three-year-old American named John William Yettaw—a Mormon father of seven and a diabetic, from Falcon, Missouri—showed up at the Lady’s house. He had swum the mile-plus from the other end of Inya Lake, with plastic bottles as buoys, breached the supposedly tight security, and arrived at her residence hungry and exhausted. Suu Kyi tried to send him away, because his presence was a violation of her house arrest, but apparently she took pity on him after he begged to be allowed to stay until he was strong enough to swim away again. Her visitor left the next day, or the day after, depending on whether the government’s or the opposition’s version of this strange encounter is correct. He was picked up by the police in the middle of Inya Lake. And now Suu Kyi has been locked away in Rangoon’s notorious Insein Prison. The authorities have announced that they will try her for all kinds of security violations. Her current six-year house arrest, which was due to end later this month, will probably be renewed. And John William Yettaw will have given the nasty Burmese authorities exactly the pretext they needed to keep Suu Kyi cut off from the world as they prepare for next year’s sham elections.