in washington, mid day here in london, half past 7:00 in the evening rangoon. the pro-democracy leader there has been found guilty of violating her house arrest. she was sentenced to an additional 18 months confinement. the sentence has drawn condemnation from europe. there is the word from india and china. she was convicted of allowing an american man to stay there after he swam there uninvited. >> please insure that nothing would except -- disrupt the trial of the most famous war and -- famous woman in burma. she is a symbol of democracy. her supporters had hoped that she would be freed. a guilty verdict means that she is going back to house arrest for 18 months. >> the sentence was given and they will be detained at home. >> the trouble started when this man, an american citizen, swam to her house uninvited days before her house arrest expired. he was allowed to stay for two nights. officials say that this breaks the terms of her detention. supporters say they are just trying to keep her out of the election. supporters say they will be the first free and fai

. >> she faced the core inside a high-security rangoon prison.urdett is a frightened country -- she faced the courts. no one dared to raise a frightened protest -- burma is a friend country. three years jail with hard labour. she is 64 and has spent most of the last 20 years in detention. within minutes, the burmese government intervenes, and the sentence was reduced them 18 months. even the regime does not want to provoke another outbreak of public am correct. crime was to allow an american visitor called john yettaw into her house. he swam there. -- curb crime was that. >> free to wander the country -- her crime was that. tens of thousands of supporters at every stop she makes, and that would be highly destabilizing for them at this critical moment as they see it in solidifying their role. >> aung san suu kyi had a landslide victory in the 1990's, but the government refused to give up power. in jailing her, they wanted to silencer, but they gave her a voice. >> -- they wanted to silence her. >> we are doing the right thing. but we alone, britai

. >> reporter: nargis smashed burma's largest city rangoon and flooded the delta to the south killing 130,000 burmese. it left some 2 million people homeless. in the aftermath, burma state television proclaimed that everything was under control and that the group of generals who rule the country were leading a well-oiled relief effort. the prime minister reassured the nation. eyewitnesses said otherwise. >> translator: after the storm, those victims who survived had nothing to eat or drink for days. there were many who were sitting and waiting for food and died of starvation. >> reporter: this burmese man goes by the alias zoro. he has to hide his real identity because he practices a trade that is virtually illegal in burma, independent journalism. >> translator: they sent in soldiers with no food or rations for themselves. the soldiers ate the food that was donated to the victims by people in the neighboring areas. while victims were suffering, the soldiers ate their food. they didn't have anything with them, but guns and pots. >> check your local listings for "wide angle" and you ca

washington, for example, but it does quite -- raised questions what method will move the junta in rangoon. justin is a biographer of aung san suu kyi, and he joins us. no surprises and what beijing had to say and its approach. the question is, do they have a point, that it is better to take the soft approach? >> i think to call it a soft approach is not quite right. china is an authoritarian state with its own human rights abuse records, very bad one. a sort of chumminess between china and burma. >> what it is saying, i impose, and implied criticism is not explicit of the kinds of stuff we have heard in sarkozy, gordon brown in britain, where they call the monstrous, terrible, and so will -- and so on. >> the chinese have been thinking for some time now that the west should really back off and stop being fiercely critical of the regime. the singaporean leader a few days ago said that suu kyi was part of the problem and not necessarily the solution. there is a large question of whether particularly in afghanistan -- that we need to tone down democracy jihad. you have to look at the history

today her supporters dared to gather on rangoon stets and film secretly outside the prison where she stoodtrial. burma's generals reduced her three-year jail sentence but they showed no inntion of releasi her yet. the verct was broadcast on bua'snews. 18onths more house arrest for vilating interna security. e presenter added that she would able to watch state television as if that would soften the blow. er lawer wasn't surprised. he had been stocking upn books and medicine his client prepares to wle awa more hours and month in her lakeside villa until the wom elected to lead her country 19 yrs ago can actually lead them. it was th american tourist who gaveburma's genera the latest excuse. he used flippers to swim across the lake in may to see her without permissio was imprisoned for seven years including hardlabor, among the charges swiing in a nonswimming area around the world, incluing london, there were protests on aung sanuu kyi's behalf. alk about sanctions on wo and ruby export that the electins would have no legiticy without suu kyi. on the road whereshe was tried and whe she

but particularly in the cities, and particularly in rangoon where they're nervous about activity.hey don't want people getting together and plotting. >> they're used to this, but they're not really used to it in the sense that it's not natural for any human being, and that's why you have -- the pattern in burma has been a couple years of political quiet followed by outbreaks of resistance because people just don't want to live this way, and that's inevitable. it's going to continue until there is a way found to bring these two sides together. >> lehrer: what happened -- the so-called saffron rebellion? the buddhist monks. what happened to them? >> the leaders of the uprising, many of whom were buddhist monks, also a number of young activists were rounded up, brutally interrogated and most of them have been sentenced to many years, in some cases decades in prison, served in isolated prisons in the jungle, so we're all focused on aung san suu kyi because she's the hero and the leader of this movement but there has been a massive crackdown on any kind of dissent, and people who are n

there's a watch for india, myanmar, all the way down to rangoon as well.t really associated with this earthquake whatsoever, we'll take you here to the coast near hons honshu. this would be about 100 miles or so from tokyo. this was a 6.4, and the japanese meteorological agency saying, yes, we could have a tsunami with this but it's probably only about a foot and a half, so not life-threatening, not devastating, although it depends on if you're in the wrong place at the right time, a foot and a half rise, if you're a fishing vessel or such, you could be in the way of this. so, right now, these are about 20 miles deep. sometimes you want to see an earthquake very, very deep, wolf, and that means that it's not going to shake the sea floor. tsunamis, because the sea floor shakes. you get a shallow quake, the sea floor shakes quite a bit so, that's why you could get a larger tsunami, like we obviously had years ago. that's all i have, about 100 miles from tokyo, but they did feel the shaking and they did feel the movement of the buildings in downtown tokyo fro

in may of 2009, he travelled from missouri to rangoon.d not go as smoothly. >> explain physically how you got there. >> the second time i came was the same route, in through the sewer tunnel in through the water. but this time of year, the water level was lower and i had two bags filled with a lot of stuff. so i had to crawl with the two bags and i got caught. two soldiers spotted me. and fortunately by the time they got close to me, i rolled over in to the water with my bags which were tied together and i was literally walking through the water and they were frightened. i don't think they saw me, they saw the bag moving through the water and moving at a consistent rate and they started throwing rocks at it. inside, i prayed, what do i do? and the only response i felt or inspiration was keep walking. that's what i did. >> you were taken by the police at that point. how were you treated? what was your situation like there? >> i spent 2 1/2 weeks with basically 24/7 interga -- inter. i was arm guarded. >> when you were going through this, t