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Aung San Suu Kyi (1945– )
In Rangoon, the capital of Myanmar (Burma), there is a leafy lane near
Inya Lake, called University Avenue. It is there that ‘The Lady’, Aung San
Suu Kyi has been under almost constant house arrest since 1990. That
was the year in which her National League for Democracy (NLD) won a
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general election with 81% of the vote. The SLORC (State Law and Order
Restoration Council) set up by the ruling military junta has refused to
recognize the results and Aung San Suu Kyi has been denied her freedom
ever since. She is the world’s most famous prisoner of conscience.
Her credentials as a political figure stem from her parents. Her father
Bogyoke (General) Aung San, having led the fight for freedom from
British colonial rule, became head of the first government of the newly
independent state in 1947. Only a few months after taking that position,
he was assassinated. Suu Kyi was then only two years old and she grew
up revering his memory. Her mother Daw Khin Kyi then took a more
prominent role in public life and in 1960 was appointed ambassador to
India and Nepal.
Aung San Suu Kyi studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at
Oxford University, where she met Michael Aris, whom she married in
1972. They had two sons, Alexander and Kim and for some years Suu Kyi
enjoyed life as a wife and mother, while researching her father’s life and
the political history of Burma. It was in 1988 that her life changed.
A phone call informed her that her mother had had a stroke and the
following day Suu Kyi flew back to Burma to nurse her. During that year
Suu Kyi became politically active. The National League for Democracy
(NLD) was formed to oppose the government and to pave the way for
free and fair elections. Suu Kyi was appointed General Secretary and she
gave her first public speech outside the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon,
calling for democratic government. When her mother died in 1989, Suu
Kyi vowed to serve her country as her parents had done, little realizing
what sacrifices would be demanded of her.
The NLD continued to oppose the regime and later that same year Suu
Kyi and her supporters found themselves facing armed soldiers.
On 5 April 1989, Aung San Suu Kyi and her colleagues confronted an
army unit whose rifles were pointed at them. She motioned for her col-
leagues to step aside while she walked alone towards the soldiers, offer-
ing herself as an easy target. An army major finally intervened and the
rifles were lowered. This poignant scene, of an unarmed solitary figure
advancing towards the aimed weapons of a paranoid military dictator-
ship, can be seen as an allegory of her struggle for freedom in her land.
In those few minutes, Aung San Suu Kyi showed extraordinary physi-
cal courage in the face of an acute mortal threat, adding still farther to
her stature as the leader of democracy in the face of tyranny.
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SLORC remains in power to this day and despite brief periods of respite
from house arrest in 1995 and in 2002, Aung San Suu Kyi has never been
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able to resume normal life since those elections in 1990. At first her
family was allowed to visit her, but when it became clear that Michael
Aris would not persuade his wife to leave the country, he and the children
were used against her. The regime refused to grant visas to her family to
visit her and cut off all communication between them, encouraging her
to leave the country. Suu Kyi would not do so, as she knew that she would
be denied re-entry. Even when her husband was diagnosed with incurable
prostate cancer in 1998, he was denied entry into Burma, and so they
were unable to say goodbye to each other.
In 1991 Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. She
heard about it on the BBC World Service. Her sons accepted the award on
her behalf and Alexander Aris in his acceptance speech said,
I know that if she were free today my mother would, in thanking you,
also ask you to pray that the oppressors and the oppressed should
throw down their weapons and join together to build a nation founded
on humanity in the spirit of peace.
Although my mother is often described as a political dissident
who strives by peaceful means for democratic change, we should remem-
ber that her quest is basically spiritual. As she has said, ‘The quintessen-
tial revolution is that of the spirit’, and she has written of the ‘essential
spiritual aims’ of the struggle. The realization of this depends solely
on human responsibility. At the root of that responsibility lies, and
I quote, ‘the concept of perfection, the urge to achieve it, the intelligence
to find a path towards it, and the will to follow that path if not to the
end, at least the distance needed to rise above individual limitation. . . .’
‘To live the full life’, she says, ‘one must have the courage to bear
the responsibility of the needs of others
. . .
one must want to bear this
responsibility.’ And she links this firmly to her faith when she writes,
‘. . . Buddhism, the foundation of traditional Burmese culture, places
the greatest value on man, who alone of all beings can achieve the
supreme state of Buddhahood. Each man has in him the potential to
realize the truth through his own will and endeavour and to help others
to realize it.’ Finally she says, ‘The quest for democracy in Burma is the
struggle of a people to live whole, meaningful lives as free and equal
members of the world community. It is part of the unceasing human
endeavour to prove that the spirit of man can transcend the flaws of his
nature.’
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Aung San Suu Kyi has a profound Buddhist faith which has informed her
peaceful protest based on the concept of
metta
or loving-kindness and
also sustained her throughout her long, lonely years of imprisonment.
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218
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