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September 25, 2003
The silent warrior
Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese leader who has spent the last 14 years of her life in and out of detention, is an inspiration icon
Aung San Suu Kyi, who went from housewife in England to one of the world’s most recognised political prisoners more than a decade ago, is an inspirational icon of Myanmar’s democracy movement.
The Nobel laureate has spent much of the past 14 years in and out of detention. Her latest three-month stint incarcerated at a secret location has sparked international outrage and fears for her health.
The slight, 58-year-old underwent a successful operation for gynaecological problems at a private hospital in Yangon, the Kyodo news agency reported on Thursday, citing hospital sources.
The report, coming nearly two weeks after Red Cross officials last visited Suu Kyi and found her well, will likely spur fresh calls for her release.
The officials said Suu Kyi was not refusing food, although the United States said earlier this month that it had “credible reporting” that she was on a hunger strike.
“She remains in detention, nobody has regular access to her and her health is not 100 per cent,” a Western diplomat told Reuters.
The soft-spoken daughter of Myanmar independence hero Aung San, Suu Kyi became an international symbol when she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 while under house arrest — from 1989 to 1995.
Released from another spell of house arrest in May last year, Suu Kyi set out on a series of trips to the provinces to meet her National League for Democracy (NLD) party workers and supporters.
Drawing big, enthusiastic crowds and turning up the pressure on the military to begin talks on a transition to democracy, her trips attracted an increasingly hostile response from backers of the military government.
Then, on May 30, Suu Kyi’s attempts to bring democracy and reconciliation to the impoverished country were once again met with brute force.
The United States says it suspects Suu Kyi and her convoy were ambushed and attacked by “government-affiliated thugs” in the north of the country. The military says four people were killed in clashes but dissidents in exile suspect scores of Suu Kyi’s supporters were killed.
Washington and the European Union have since imposed tougher sanctions on the military junta, while key donor Japan has blocked fresh aid.
Southeast Asian nations have publicly rebuked Myanmar, but Yangon says it will free Suu Kyi only when the political temperature cools.
The resource-rich country of 45 million people, has been ruled by the military since a 1962 coup.
Suu Kyi’s NLD won the country’s last elections in 1990 by a landslide, but has never been allowed to govern, treated instead to imprisonment, harassment and intimidation.
The accidental activist
Suu Kyi was born in Yangon, then called Rangoon, on June 19, 1945, and educated in India and Oxford before working with the United Nations in New York.
In 1972, she married Michael Aris, an Oxford academic, and they raised two sons while moving between Bhutan, India, and Japan before settling in Oxford.
But the idyll of Suu Kyi’s life in the English countryside ended in 1988. She returned to her family’s home on Yangon’s Inya Lake to care for her ailing mother just as resentment of military rule boiled over into nationwide pro-democracy protests.
Thousands of people had been killed by the time the military finally crushed the uprising in September 1988.
Suu Kyi’s struggle to lead Myanmar down a more democratic path has come at great personal cost.
She has always refused to leave the country for fear of not being allowed back in, while her husband was for long periods refused a visa to visit her, even when he was dying from prostate cancer.
Aris died in March 1999 and Suu Kyi declined an offer from the junta to leave the country to attend his funeral.
Her determination may be a family legacy, left to her by her father, independence leader General Aung San, who was assassinated by rivals when Suu Kyi was a baby.
At her first speech to crowds of democracy protesters in front of Yangon’s historic Shwedagon Pagoda in August 1988, listeners were struck by Suu Kyi’s resemblance to the hero of Burma’s campaign for independence from British rule in the 1940s.
“I could not, as my father’s daughter, remain indifferent to all that was going on,” she told the huge crowd.
“This national crisis could, in fact, be called the second struggle for independence.” — Reuters
Christmas in Rangoon
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In 1999, Suu Kyi’s husband, Dr Michael Aris, died from prostate cancer having last seen her in 1995. In this extract from his 1991 book Freedom From Fear, Dr Aris pays tribute to his wife Our sons were in bed and we were reading when the telephone rang on March 31, 1988. Suu picked up the phone to learn her mother had suffered a severe stroke. She started to pack. I had a premonition our lives would change for ever.
When Alexander and Kim’s summer terms finished, we flew out to Rangoon to join her. On 23 July, Ne Win announced he was resigning. I can still remember watching with Suu the scene on state television. She was electrified. I think it was at this moment that Suu made up her mind to step forward.
Recently, I read again the 187 letters she sent to me in Bhutan in the eight months before we married in London. She constantly reminded me that one day she would have to return to Burma, that she counted on my support at that time, not as her due, but as a favour.
‘Sometimes I am beset by fears that circumstances and national considerations might tear us apart just when we are so happy in each other that separation would be a torment. And yet such fears are so futile and inconsequential: if we love and cherish each other as much as we can while we can, I am sure love and compassion will triumph in the end.’
After her mother’s funeral, the boys and I returned to Oxford. Although Suu wrote, we were more dependent for news on the press reports. We would read in the papers of the official harassment and vilification she endured. Alexander and Kim later joined Suu for their third trip since the whole drama began to unfold. I could not come with them because my father had just died.
On July 20 I heard the news that Suu had been placed under house arrest. As my plane taxied to a halt at Rangoon airport, it was surrounded by troops. I was told I could stay with Suu and the boys if I had no contact with any person engaged in politics.
I arrived to find the house surrounded by troops and Suu in the third day of a hunger strike. Her single demand was that she should be allowed to go to prison with her young supporters. She believed her presence with them in prison would afford them protection from maltreatment. She took her last meal on the evening of July 20, and for the following 12 days she accepted only water.
On that day, a military officer assured her that her young people would not be tortured. The doctors, whose treatment she had hitherto refused, put her on a drip. She had lost 12 pounds. She recovered. The crisis had passed.
The boys learned martial arts from the guards. We put the house in order. Things seemed to be on an even keel by the time the Oxford term loomed. We left for England on September 2. It was the last time the boys were allowed to see their mother. Their Burmese passports were cancelled.
I was allowed to return once more to be with her for a fortnight the following Christmas. It seems the authorities had hoped I would try to persuade her to leave with me. Knowing the strength of Suu’s determination, I had not even thought of doing this. The days I spent alone with her that last time, completely isolated from the world, are among my happiest memories of our many years of marriage. It was wonderfully peaceful.
Suu had established a strict regime of exercise, study, and piano which I managed to disrupt. I produced Christmas presents I had brought one by one to spread them out over several days. We had all the time in the world to talk about many things. I did not suspect this would be the last time we would be together for the foreseeable future. Dawn-Guardian News Service
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