Regime holds American after swim to Suu Kyi's home

The official Kyemon daily said Thursday that John William Yeattaw was arrested while swimming in Inya Lake in Yangon early Wednesday.

Under interrogation, Yeattaw said he arrived in Yangon on a tourist visa Saturday and swam across the lake to Suu Kyi's compound Sunday night. He said he had secretly entered the house and stayed there until Tuesday night, the newspaper said.

Suu Kyi won an election in 1990 but never took power after the country's generals nullified the vote. She has spent more than 13 of the past 19 years under one form of detention or another.

Anyone wishing to visit her needs permission from the military authorities, who have run the country for four decades.

Contacted by Reuters, a U.S. embassy official who asked not to be identified said: "We just read about it in the official paper and we haven't been contacted by any official about it so far."

Asked about Yeattaw's motivations, he replied: "I have no idea."

People familiar with Suu Kyi's residence said it was unlikely Yeattaw could have remained in the compound for two days without her knowledge.

The newspaper said the authorities had confiscated Yeattaw's passport, a black haversack, a torch, a pair of pliers, a camera, two $100 notes and some local currency.

The lake is located at the heart of an elite residential area, home to the U.S. ambassador and the U.S. embassy.
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Children being abducted and raped in military Myanmar

The human rights group, Watchlist, has urged the UN Security Council to take action to protect thousands of children in Myanmar.

Watchlist has claimed children are abducted, raped and recruited as soldiers by both the government armed forces and ethnic minority militia groups.

Watchlist has said tens of thousands of children in Myanmar are recruited each year, some directly from schools.

A report from Watchist has charged that the UN Security Council has remained largely silent on the issue of child abuse in Myanmar, despite evidence from both UN sources and local human rights organizations.

Watchlist and other rights groups are calling on the Security Council to do more to protect the children of Myanmar and to hold the perpetrators of crimes against them accountable.

The recruitment of child soldiers is supposedly illegal under Myanmar law, with officials denying there are any child soldiers in the ranks.