WHILE the MPs’ expenses row rumbles on, we risk losing sight that Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy in Burma, which won 82 per cent of the seats in the 1990 election, is in great peril.

The election was subsequently declared null and void by the callous generals who then ruled Burma and whose successors continue to terrrorise the population.

Ms Suu Kyi has spent most of the 19 years since the election under house arrest.

On May 14, she was imprisoned. It appears she will face trial for breaking terms of her house arrest, which forbids visitors, after an American swam across a lake and refused to leave her property.

She has committed no crime, but this seems to be an attempt to get her out of the way while the SPDC regime holds phoney elections next year.

Bo Hla Tint, the foreign affairs minister in the exiled National Coalition Government of Burma, has been quoted as saying that now is the time for the international community to end Burma’s descent into hell and to use Ms Suu Kyi’s kangaroo court trial as a base upon which to build greater democracy in the country. I couldn’t agree more.

Peter Sagar, Newcastle.