A very special lady will observe her 62nd birthday on June 19. She and the hundreds of thousands who hold her in high regard had hoped it would be a real celebration, but the Burmese military dictatorship last night dashed all hope of that. Instead they decreed that democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi must be imprisoned for a further year in the Rangoon home in which she has already spent most of the past 17 years.
This callous disregard for her rights has not come as a surprise. Over the past few days the authorities have been rounding up people believed to be supporters of the National League for Democracy (NLD), the party she led to a landslide election victory in 1990 but which the military rulers never allowed to take office, jailing her along with hundreds of members of her party.
The renewed crackdown came in the wake of prayers and vigils organised by wellwishers and appeals by world leaders, past and present, to free the 1991 Nobel laureate tomorrow which is the anniversary of her most recent arrest in 2003 and the day set by the junta to review her detention. The round-up was a bad omen and clearly a tightening of the screw by state security enforcers aimed at heading off any unrest or protest, neither of which would have followed a fair and positive decision. Once the first arrest was made, her fate was sealed.
Prolonging Suu Kyi's detention is selfish, unfair and illogical. Surely, the military rulers must realise that by continually courting international condemnation and inflaming public opinion, they are taking a greater risk than that entailed in freeing this courageous lady. Such repressive behaviour has already led to the country being ostracised by much of the world, condemned to economic sanctions by the United States, branded as a serial human rights violator, castigated over its escalating drug trade and regarded as Asean's biggest embarrassment. When a country is publicly derided as a pariah state held hostage to the paranoid delusions of a leadership which has lost contact with reality, it is time to pay urgent attention to mending fences.
If one nation could help persuade the Burmese leadership to be more pragmatic and amenable to reason, it is that country's biggest investor, China. Unlike Asean, which has failed spectacularly with its attempts at constructive engagement and faith in road maps, China does have the attitude, influence and ability necessary to rein in its patron's worst abuses, if it considered doing so to be in its own best interest.
China has achieved this clout by supplying the junta with arms, buying its gas and timber and providing outlets for businesses. While it has no ideological interest in encouraging democracy, it is concerned about stability in its client states. Any instability poses a threat to Chinese commerce. And China needs Burmese natural gas over the next 30 years to meet its needs and fuel growth. Ensuring this requires a stable government. The xenophobic and superstitious policies of Burma's paramount leader Gen Than Shwe _ who abruptly moved the administrative capital 320km inland to Naypyidaw reportedly on the advice of an astrologer _ have little in common with the desirable model of stability sought by Beijing.
Were the Burmese leadership to be coaxed into looking for an area of common ground with the NLD, it would do much to help restore needed stability. Speeding up the process of reform would do even more, and the release from house arrest of Suu Kyi would send out a positive signal that the country was prepared to acknowledge the impracticality of living a hermit-like existence in an increasingly globalised world.
It is a shame that our government has not publicly spoken out or done more to secure Suu Kyi's release. Other Thais have long held her in great respect for her courage, humanitarian ideals, dedication and dignity. The world's most famous political prisoner is not known and revered as ''The Lady'' for nothing.
Like Nelson Mandela in South Africa before her, Aung San Suu Kyi's jailers will never crush her spirit or what she stands for, however much they may try.