The trial of Burma's renowned opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, is being held in secret, behind the walls of the country's most notorious jail, the aptly named Insein Prison.
Anyone approaching the prison had to pass through two lines of barbed-wire barricades, manned by armed police. Very few did. Four EU diplomats were refused entry.
A small handful of sympathisers were allowed to stage a silent vigil between the two cordons. Her lawyers were instructed not to repeat any of the testimony given in court.
It sounds like the trial of a dangerous, terrorist suspect.
But the defendants are a waif-like 63-year-old woman and her two female companions, accused of nothing more than allowing an uninvited well-wisher, an American, who had swum across the lake to reach her home, to stay until he had recovered from his exhaustion.
Aung San Suu Kyi has spent much of the past two decades under house arrest, the last six years in such severe isolation that she has had almost no opportunity to communicate with the outside world.
Her party, which resoundingly won the last election 19 years ago, has been weakened and divided by almost constant military harassment.
Meanwhile the army, her nemesis, has more than doubled in size, has extended its control into all areas of life and now consumes around 40% of the national budget.
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