The swimmer

Burma/Myanmar is a strange place. But this is truly bizarre.

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.