Protests to Highlight Suu Kyi Captivity

[Old Hippie]

Protests to Highlight Suu Kyi Captivity

 

Myanmar activists shout pro-democracy slogans during a rally in New Delhi, India, Saturday, June 18, 2005. Thousands of birthday cards have been sent and a pop star will release a song to draw attention to the plight of Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi who marks her 60th birthday and 2,523rd day under military detention on Sunday. June 18, 2005 1:44 PM EDT

BANGKOK, Thailand - Global protests will be staged and thousands of birthday cards sent to draw attention to the plight of Myanmar's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who turns 60 on Sunday - her 3,523rd day under military detention.

 

Isolated both from the outside world and her supporters at home, Suu Kyi is confined to a now dilapidated, two-story family house overgrown by jungle in the capital of Yangon. It is sealed off around the clock by security forces.

 

But the Nobel Peace Prize laureate - articulate, attractive and unquestionably brave - remains the great hope for those around the world seeking to end more than four decades of harsh military rule in her homeland, also known as Burma.

 

"We are trying to use the opportunity of Suu Kyi's 60th birthday to galvanize public opinion and politicians into finally taking some action on Burma," said Mark Farmaner, spokesman for the British-based Burma Campaign.

 

The birthday campaign is particularly important, he said, because lately interest in Suu Kyi's plight has tapered off. "The international response has been quite pathetic since her latest arrest," Farmaner said.

 

In a birthday wish to Suu Kyi, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrote that her courage "in the face of the junta's brutal repression and your continuing house arrest inspires people around the world."

 

"The United States stands with you and all others in your struggle to free the Burmese people. We look forward to the day when you can celebrate your birthday in a democratic and free Burma where fundamental human rights are respected," Rice added.

 

But little more than statements of concern followed Suu Kyi's detention in May 2003 after a pro-government mob savagely attacked her car convoy in northern Myanmar, killing a number of her companions.

 

The democracy leader has been in detention for a total of 3,523 days since she was first put under house arrest in 1989, according to the campaign's Web site.

 

The global birthday effort is modeled after the 1988 "Mandela at 70" campaign to free Nelson Mandela from imprisonment in then apartheid-era South Africa. Protests were scheduled at Myanmar embassies and activists were to deliver 6,000 birthday cards at Yangon's mission in Washington.

 

Irish musician Damien Rice will release "Unplayed Piano," a song about what was one of Suu Kyi's few pleasures under detention - until her piano broke down.

 

The muted response has led to a deterioration of conditions in Myanmar and greater isolation for the democracy activist than during her previous periods under house arrest, Farmaner said.

 

According to sources in Yangon close to the pro-democracy movement, Suu Kyi's only human contacts with the outside world are her two personal doctors whose visits have been curtailed since last year. Two members of her National League for Democracy party do the shopping but must deliver thoroughly searched packages at the gate of her unkempt compound, the garden of which resembles a jungle.

 

At the military's insistence, Suu Kyi dismissed 13 NLD youths who provided security in mid-December. And the military liaison officer with whom she had contact since her first detention in 1989 was jailed last year in a power struggle. He hasn't been replaced.

 

Her only companions are a woman in her mid-60s who does the cooking and the woman's daughter.

 

Suu Kyi is able to listen to the radio, read government newspapers and watch state-run television but doesn't have a satellite dish to receive international channels. She is believed to be healthy and has not been physically harmed by her captors.

 

"It's international attention and public profile which has kept Aung San Suu Kyi safe," said Farmaner.

 

At home, respect for Suu Kyi and silent support for her goals still appear widespread - even if some have given up hope that she can bring change to an entrenched, ruthless military.

 

"She is still important for our future because it is only because of her that our country is getting international attention. The Myanmar issue would be forgotten if not for her and her Nobel Peace Prize," said a retired civil servant, 68-year-old Win Myint, in Yangon.

 

Others believe she is a spent force, noting that democracy hasn't advanced an inch since the daughter of independence hero Aung San arrived on the scene to lead a popular uprising in 1988, which the military brutally crushed. Two years later, her party swept to victory in general elections, but rather than recognizing the results the junta set about imprisoning her followers. The detained Suu Kyi advocated dialogue and a Gandhi-like resistance to her oppressors.

 

"Aung San Suu Kyi turns the other cheek, meditates and patiently waits for the generals to find the decency to honor the 1990 elections. But this strategy has accomplished nothing and ruined the lives of many of her followers," says Myint Thein, a U.S.-based adviser to exiled resistance groups. "When you have exhausted all peaceful options you have to fight."

 

David Steinberg, a Myanmar expert at Georgetown University in Washington, describes Suu Kyi as "the icon, the Joan of Arc," but adds that, dangerously, she's become too much of a one-person show.

 

Members of her close entourage are in their late 70s and 80s and her NLD party is unwilling or unable to make decisions without her.

 

"I think she is still a force within Burma but she's not an institutional force. Basically she's a personal force. The military have emasculated the NLD," Steinberg said.

 

He speculated that the generals won't release her until after the already years-long drafting of a constitution and a referendum on it are completed for fear she would disrupt the military stage-managed process.

 

The "Suu Kyi at 60" organizers are more optimistic.

 

"We're hoping that this will be the start of a new global push for change in Burma and to apply pressure on the regime," Farmaner says. "It's time the international community took this issue more seriously."

 

--

 

Associated Press reporter Aye Aye Win contributed to this report from Yangon.

 

Copyright 2005 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

[pattaya127]

Thanks, OH.

 

One of the very rare books that speak of the Myanmar situation from the POV of the people themselves and how they deal with the agonizing slowness of changes in Myanmar, and the psychological torpor induced by years of iron rules (not to speak of the institutional terror the junta ruled with), is "LIVING SILENCE" by Christina Fink, if anyone is interested.

 

People would seem to have been broken definitely in terms of believing anything is about to change anytime soon. So they deal with it, by avoiding politics and worrying instead in getting ahead by individual means, parents encourage their kids to get as much education as they can (paying for it if they can, public Universities were closed for years, but private ones thrived), famillies set up business, cozying with the corrupted govnmt if necessary, to have a son in the military also brought some goodies, etc...

 

The whole North and Shan Plateau benefitted from the truce between most rebel factions and the junta, and from what I have seen in my last trip, the junta leaves a free hand to private enterprise, so that they are now building multi-stories shopping emporiums in Mandalay.

 

Yangoon is slowly getting jammed with traffic during the day, and tourism is growing exponentially.

 

Major cities were rarely affected by the forced labor rule the junta implemented for years. a lot of international aid money went directly to the rebel provinces that made a deal with the junta, again this more in the north-east plateau than the south. When you see a new road, bridge or hospital, chances are the funds are indeed coming from abroad. It helps the junta show a facade of "things happening for the best", while they still reap profits from their own blood sucking lucrative deals with multi-nationals and western/chinese businessmen.

 

The bad luck of Myanmar is that it is surrounded by countries who do not give a fuck about human rights and never put pressure on the junta, which encouraged western countries to do business as usual, save the USA who maintain a boycott, but still won't interfere in ASEAN decisions to leave the junta to rule pretty much as it wishes.

 

At this point, i do not think anyone has any idea what side the pendulum is going to veer, politically. I think the economic surge of the cities will create a budding middle-class that will exert some power for its own benefit, which will trickle a bit thru the country at snail pace, this may reverberate in a mass movement that may chase the whole junta generation out of power like a ripe fruit falls from a tree (the generals, if smart enough, will have little to lose, being part of that middle-class after all), but please, don't quote me on that. it might get even weirder than it is now.