The fate of Myanmar’s detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been overshadowed by the devastation wrought by Cyclone Nargis, but she remains the most powerful rival to Myanmar’s junta.
Her house arrest was quietly extended for another year on Tuesday, amid high-profile diplomatic maneuvering to facilitate the delivery of aid to 2.4 million needy storm victims.
The cyclone left more than 133,000 dead or missing, and focused international outrage at the junta’s slow and often paranoid response that hindered the flow of foreign aid.
PHOTO: AP
Relief agencies say the regime is now opening up the disaster zone to foreign aid workers, even as it keeps a tight lid on Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters.
Authorities informed her of the latest extension of her detention during a brief meeting at her home, while security forces carried out a neighborhood clampdown and arrested 16 of her supporters — including a 12-year-old boy — who had tried to march to her house.
Five years into her latest period of incarceration, her US lawyer has called the extension of her house arrest illegal under the ruling junta’s own laws — but the only Nobel peace laureate in detention has no way of challenging it.
Even though the regime has effectively silenced her, detaining her for more than 12 of the last 18 years, she remains the essential figure in Myanmar’s democracy struggle.
The daughter of Myanmar’s founding father, General Aung San, launched her political career relatively late after spending much of her life abroad.
A slender woman who prefers traditional clothing and often wears flowers in her hair, Aung San Suu Kyi studied at Oxford, married a British academic, had two sons and seemed settled in the UK.
But when she returned to Yangon in 1988 to tend to her ailing mother, she found the city gripped by protests against the military.
Later that year she saw aspirations for democracy evaporate as soldiers fired on crowds of demonstrators, leaving at least 3,000 dead.
Within days she took on a leading role in the pro-democracy movement, petitioning the government to prepare for elections and delivering impassioned speeches to hundreds of thousands of people at Yangon’s Shwedagon Pagoda, the country’s most sacred Buddhist site.
In September of 1988 she helped found the National League for Democracy (NLD), an alliance of 105 opposition parties, and campaigned across Myanmar (then officially known as Burma) for peaceful change, mesmerizing huge crowds with her intelligence, poise and rhetoric.
Alarmed by her fearlessness and the support she commanded, the generals in 1989 placed her under house arrest.
Despite being confined to her home, she led the NLD to a landslide victory in 1990 polls. The party won 82 percent of parliamentary seats in a result the junta refused to accept.
Her dedication to non-violence won her the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, putting her beside Nelson Mandela among the world’s leading voices against tyranny.
During a brief moment of freedom, she said in a 1999 interview that the military struggled to accept the very concept of dialogue.
“They don’t understand the meaning of dialogue — they think it is some kind of competition where one side loses and the other wins, and perhaps they are not so confident they will be able to win,” she said.
The icon of Myanmar’s pro-democracy cause has paid a high price for her fame.
As her husband Michael Aris was in the final stages of a long battle with cancer, the junta refused him a visa to see his wife. He died in March of 1999, not having seen Aung San Suu Kyi since 1995. She refused to leave the country to see him, knowing she would never have been allowed to return.
Threats and vilification from the junta, along with years of forced solitude, served only to make her more determined.
Critics see her resolve as intransigence that has contributed to the stalemate, but the woman known in Myanmar simply as “The Lady” remains the most powerful symbol of freedom in a country where the army rules with an iron fist.
She has cast her struggle as part of humanity’s greater spiritual battle against tyranny.
“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,” she wrote in Freedom From Fear and Other Writings.
“It is part of the unceasing human endeavor to prove that the spirit of man can transcend the flaws of his nature.”
That US assistance was a model for Taiwan’s spectacular development success was early recognized by policymakers and analysts. In a report to the US Congress for the fiscal year 1962, former President John F. Kennedy noted Taiwan’s “rapid economic growth,” was “producing a substantial net gain in living.” Kennedy had a stake in Taiwan’s achievements and the US’ official development assistance (ODA) in general: In September 1961, his entreaty to make the 1960s a “decade of development,” and an accompanying proposal for dedicated legislation to this end, had been formalized by congressional passage of the Foreign Assistance Act. Two
March 31 to April 6 On May 13, 1950, National Taiwan University Hospital otolaryngologist Su You-peng (蘇友鵬) was summoned to the director’s office. He thought someone had complained about him practicing the violin at night, but when he entered the room, he knew something was terribly wrong. He saw several burly men who appeared to be government secret agents, and three other resident doctors: internist Hsu Chiang (許強), dermatologist Hu Pao-chen (胡寶珍) and ophthalmologist Hu Hsin-lin (胡鑫麟). They were handcuffed, herded onto two jeeps and taken to the Secrecy Bureau (保密局) for questioning. Su was still in his doctor’s robes at
Last week the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said that the budget cuts voted for by the China-aligned parties in the legislature, are intended to force the DPP to hike electricity rates. The public would then blame it for the rate hike. It’s fairly clear that the first part of that is correct. Slashing the budget of state-run Taiwan Power Co (Taipower, 台電) is a move intended to cause discontent with the DPP when electricity rates go up. Taipower’s debt, NT$422.9 billion (US$12.78 billion), is one of the numerous permanent crises created by the nation’s construction-industrial state and the developmentalist mentality it
Experts say that the devastating earthquake in Myanmar on Friday was likely the strongest to hit the country in decades, with disaster modeling suggesting thousands could be dead. Automatic assessments from the US Geological Survey (USGS) said the shallow 7.7-magnitude quake northwest of the central Myanmar city of Sagaing triggered a red alert for shaking-related fatalities and economic losses. “High casualties and extensive damage are probable and the disaster is likely widespread,” it said, locating the epicentre near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay, home to more than a million people. Myanmar’s ruling junta said on Saturday morning that the number killed had