In cruel solitude, denied visitors or even a telephone, a frail woman marks ten years as the political prisoner of a vicious and illegitimate military dictatorship. Since 1988, when she returned from Britain to her native Burma and, in response to a massacre of student demonstrators, formed the resolutely non-violent National League for Democracy, the Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi has spent most of those 16 years in prison or under house arrest. It is 15 years since the League astounded the junta by winning 80 per cent of the vote in parliamentary elections that the generals believed they had rigged so as to ensure the League’s political demise. The junta quashed the result, imprisoned her and many League colleagues and set out to crush every last shred of opposition; yet – as became obvious from the throngs that crowded to her when she was briefly released in 2002 – it cannot extinguish the loyalty which Daw Suu Kyi, known to Burmese simply as “The Lady”, commands.

Her release is imperative and urgent, because that enduring loyalty is now this crushed society’s only potential bulwark against the tragedies that have engulfed it, beginning in 1962 with General Ne Win’s disastrous “Burmese way to socialism”. These were intensified by the clique that has the gall to call itself the State Peace and Development Council. The country now officially known as Myanmar is a problem not just for its people but, increasingly, for the region.

On the pretext of crushing rebellions by persecuted minority peoples, the regime has committed every conceivable abuse. Nearly a million refugees have fled to neighbouring countries; as many are internally displaced. Military “enterprises” run rackets that, with the collusion of China and elements of the Thai military, are stripping gem mines and teak forests, as well as trafficking in opiates and amphetamines. In a fertile land, a third of children are malnourished, HIV/Aids and tuberculosis are rife and humanitarian agencies are systematically thwarted.

The international response has been a flabby mix of selective Western sanctions, and an abortive Asean policy of “engagement”. While pretending to be preparing a new “democratic” constitution, the junta has blocked serious mediation, even by UN envoys. But Asean is no longer the shield that it was. In July it forced Burma to relinquish its turn at the body’s rotating chairmanship, and a parliamentary caucus within Asean is pressing for its suspension.

Washington is pressing the Security Council to put Burma on its agenda with a resolution obliging it to free Daw Suu Kyi and her fellow political prisoners and acknowledge the League’s legitimacy. A coruscating new report sponsored by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Vaclav Havel buttresses that case. China objects, but nine of the 16 Council votes would suffice. Burma differs from other abominably misruled states because a democratically elected alternative exists, something not even China can deny. United pressure is crucial if an intransigent regime is to change.