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| Sunday, 12 May 2002 |
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Suu Kyi - finally free by Carol Aloysius Had Myanmar's late freedom fighter who was assassinated for the same
cause as his daughter was imprisoned half a century later been alive
today, he would no doubt have been a proud man. Aung San The 57 year old Oxford educated Nobel Laureate has been under house arrest for the past 19 months. Since her first house arrest in 1990, she has had innumerable clashes with the military police in her bid to lift the travel restrictions that confined her to her house and home town in Central Yangon. Now she has finally broken the shackles that have bound her all these years". News of her freedom, last week-end, was not just a moment of relief and joy for the thousands of cheering supporters who thronged the road outside the headquarters of her NLD; it was a victory for the international community as a whole which has been tirelessly lobbying for her freedom since her first house arrest in 1990. Aung San Suu Kyi's indomitable will and refusal to give up her struggle for democracy even in the face of severe odds, made her one of the world's most outstanding symbols of courage and inspiration. President Clinton, who in December last year conferred on Burma's most famous freedom fighter America's highest civilian honour of the Presidential Medal of Freedom (which too Suu Kyi was unable to receive in person) said of her, "She sits confined as we speak here in her home in Rangoon, unable to speak to her people or the world. But her struggle still inspires us..... No one has done more to teach that the desire for liberty is universal". Suu Kyi's various dare devil escapades for freedom read like a modern thriller. In 1998 , she staged a 5 day stand-off which was forcibly ended by the Military Junta. A month later she spent 13 days in a car on a bridge outside Yangon until she was forced to give up her protest when she became dehydrated. Again in August 2000 she spent nine days on a road stand off until she was forcing returned to her home and had remained there under house arrest, giving rise to fears for her health and safety. Again, following the lifting of some of the tight controls over her movements, she defied the ruling military government by attempting to board a train to visit the Northern city, which was foiled, as it happened in a previous incident in 1996 when the authorities disconnected her carriage just before her departure citing technical problems! To mothers, (it being Mothers Day today) the most poignant role that was thrust on the Nobel Peace laureate was perhaps that of having to give up her role as mother to her two young sons from whom she was separated in their growing up years. When she refused the option offered her of leaving her country and living with her family abroad, she admitted the decision was hard particularly because she was a mother." As a mother the greatest sacrifice was giving up my sons", she said. Yet her iron will to see her cause through to the end prevented her from taking the easy path. " I was always aware that others had sacrificed more than me", she said by way of explaining her choice to remain in Myanmar. From her own mother this charismatic leader learned the hardest lesson in life - of forgiveness and love - even for one's bitterest enemies. Suu kyi paid the greatest compliment to her mother when she replied to a question on her experience as a house prisoner, "I never learnt to hate my captors, so I never felt frustrated. My mother never taught me to hate even those who killed my father. I never once heard my mother talk with hatred about the men who assassinated my father". Along with her own home country, the world now awaits with hope that Suu Kyi will be able to successfully take her country along the path of democracy and realise a dream she has shared with her late father a century ago. |
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| Editorial | Security Produced by Lake House |
Suu Kyi, after
opting for an imprisoned life in her native country to living free abroad
with her husband and two sons, following the landslide victory of the
National league for Democracy in 1990, a victory that the ruling military
government never acknowledged, has finally broken the shackles that had
bound her for nearly 13 years".
