LOOK, dear readers, Burma’s “Angel of freedom and democracy”, Aung San Suu Kyi sacrificed her youth and joy for the cause she held so dear to her heart. She turned 60 yesterday, a day marked by anti-junta slogans that reverberated across the world.
Suu Kyi lost many things in life. Worst of all, she couldn’t be by the side of her ailing husband, as he lived abroad with a serious ailment. Her cause for her country was more dear to her heart. For the past 15 years, with brief interruptions, she was under house arrest, the military spreading a soldiers’ ring around her and her freedom.
She was young when she joined the freedom and democracy movement in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, and courted the wrath of the military junta. Possibly she got so many offers from the junta in away as to drift her from her life’s mission and make her a part of the establishment. She was not the one to yield, and she stood resolutely behind her cause, heading the National League for Democracy and leading it to a sweeping victory in the 1990 elections. But the junta refused to hand over power to her, and instead put her under house arrest.
Her youth and its vigour are behind her today. A good part of her life is gone. It hasn’t gone waste; it has gone for a cause. No matter whether the Myanmarese get their freedom in her lifetime or later, history will always remember her as the angel who made it possible for them. That will be to her credit, even as her dream remains unfulfilled. It is more than any material gain. She lives for her principles; and she hasn’t budged an inch.
The Nobel Laureate remains tied to her family home in what is perhaps one of the longest periods of “house arrest” for a popular leader, split into three terms so far, and her plight hardened by the vile acts of the military junta. Worse things have happened in the period between her landmark electoral victory and her 60th birthday, the most heinous of them being the attack -a virtual assassination attempt—on her and her supporters who formed into a convoy touring the countryside two years ago, in one of her brief recesses of freedom. This is besides other acts of aggression, including the gunning down of many pro-democracy activists by the junta’s men in the past years. International rights groups have complained that the junta is holding some 1350 political prisoners incommunicado, without giving them any access to legal means of fighting their cases, even as they are subjected to constant torture and maltreatement in prisons.
It is strange that a country like Burma, blessed with rich natural resources, should continue to live behind a bamboo curtain, with little communication with the rest of the world. The military junta, that has been holding on to power there since 1962, has neither allowed progress to take hold, nor freedom to spread its wings in the country.
The American sanctions, consequent on the subversion of the electoral process in 1990, have however not worked much to the disadvantage of the military regime. What is required are harsher steps in tandem with the collective will of the outside world to force the junta to see reason.
Dear readers, George Bush has now become the champion of democracy around the world, and his deputy Condoleezza Rice the campaigner for that cause. Burma must get their due attention in this campaign. The super power should help make the success of Suu Kyi in Burma an example for the rest of the world to follow, especially those in the Middle East, or anywhere else in the third world. By making Burma’s freedom and democracy movement a success story, Bush can make others confident of the chances of their success in their respective countries.