On June 19 Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Burma, celebrated her 60th birthday under house arrest, leaving her opposition party adrift and powerless for its 16th year.
The Nobel Peace Prize winner is the only Peace laureate imprisoned in the world at this moment. An international ”Free Aung San Suu Kyi at 60th birthday” campaign was launched, modelled on the campaigns around Nelson Mandela’s 70th birthday in 1990. Suu Kyi’s birthday was celebrated around the world, particularly in the United States, Norway, European Union countries, South Africa, Japan, Australia and countries in Asia.
In 1990 the NLD won a landslide election, but was not allowed by Burma’s military junta to form a government. Suu Kyi was placed under military detention, where she has remained for 10 of the past 16 years.
Her current period of house arrest started in 2003, after the Depayin massacre, an assassination attempt orchestrated by the junta, which she survived but during which more than 200 of her supporters were killed. She and her deputy, U Tin Oo, also under house arrest, remain cut off from the world. Several elected MPs are in prison, alongside more than 1 000 democracy activists.
”We all admire the courageous Aung San Suu Kyi, who believes in democracy and peacefully speaks out against its violent suppression,” said Vaclav Havel, former president of the Czech Republic. The 2004 Time 100 Award voted Suu Kyi one of the most influential people in the world.
In 1988, despite opposition from the government, Suu Kyi made a speech-making tour throughout the country. She was walking with her associates along a street when soldiers lined up in front of the group, threatening to shoot if they did not halt. Suu Kyi asked her supporters to step aside and she walked on. At the last moment, the major in command ordered the soldiers not to fire. She explained later: ”It seemed so much simpler to provide them with a single target than to bring everyone else in.”
In 1999 her husband was dying of prostate cancer in England, where he lived with their two sons. He had repeatedly requested permission to visit his wife one last time before he died, but the military authorities denied him entry into Burma. They suggested that Suu Kyi visit him in England. She refused, fearing that if she left the country she would not be allowed to return. Her phone line was cut during her last talk with her dying husband.
Among Suu Kyi’s more than 70 international awards since 1990 was an honorary doctorate in 1997 from the University of Natal. Her late husband, Professor Michael Aris, read her speech on her behalf. Included in it was this story from her:
”As a new student at Oxford University, I was taken to a fruit shop by an English friend. As I was reaching for a big, handsome orange she looked at the label on the fruit and told me it came from South Africa and explained why I should not buy it. I was struck by the strength of her determination to do whatever she could to combat apartheid, particularly as she was not at all politically inclined. For her it was a matter of conscience, an act of common humanity to stand by the black people of South Africa in their fight to live as full citizens in their own country. I am happy and proud to be able to say that from that day I never bought anything from South Africa in protest against apartheid. Since apartheid collapsed, I have not had a chance to buy anything South African.”
Before her last house arrest, South African David Phillip Kramer interviewed her on the BBC’s Talking Point. He asked what she would like from the people of South Africa. She replied: ”I am very wary of giving people advice. But I would like to remind the people of South Africa that they have been through very, very difficult times themselves and we would appreciate it very much if they could view our situation with sympathy and do whatever they can help us.
”I sometimes think that when change came to South Africa, people in authority forgot that once upon a time they too were struggling. I have to be quite frank and say that I have often wondered whether the present government of South Africa does everything it can do to support our cause or whether it is even interested in doing everything that it can to support our cause.”
Dr Thein Win writes on behalf of the Free Burma Campaign, South Africa