Global protests will be staged this week, 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 as she marks her 60th birthday and 2,523rd day under military detention on Sunday.
Isolated from the outside world and her decimated political party, Suu Kyi is confined to a now dilapidated, two-story family house sealed off around the clock by security forces in the Myanmar capital of Yangon.
The Free Aung San Suu Kyi campaign signifies that 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.
PHOTO: AFP
But within Myanmar the efforts before Suu Kyi's birthday are unlikely to lead either to her release from house arrest or less autocratic rule. The generals have long proved virtually impervious to outside pressure, even economic sanctions from the US.
"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. The international response has been quite pathetic since her latest arrest," says Mark Farmaner, spokesman for Burma Campaign, UK.
Little more than statements of concern followed Suu Kyi's last detention in May 2003 after a pro-government mob savagely attacked her car convoy in northern Myanmar, killing a number of her companions.
This muted response, especially from Asian nations and the EU, has led to a deterioration of conditions in Myanmar and greater isolation of Suu Kyi than during her previous periods under house arrest, Farmaner argues.
According to sources close to the pro-democracy movement in Yangon, 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 (NLD) do the shopping but must deliver thoroughly searched packages at the gate of her unkempt compound, the garden of which resembles a jungle.
Suu Kyi dismissed the 13 youths from the NLD who provided security in mid-December as protest against the military's demand that she reduce her security contingent. And the military liaison officer with whom she had contact since her first detention in 1989 was jailed last year in a power struggle and 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.
Suu Kyi 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," says Farmaner, whose group is orchestrating the campaign for her release in the UK.
The global effort is modeled after the 1988 "Mandela at 70" campaign to free Nelson Mandela from imprisonment in then apartheid-era South Africa. Protests at Myanmar embassies around the world are scheduled for today and activists are to deliver 6,000 birthday cards at Yangon's mission in Washington.
Supporters will be putting themselves under symbolic 24-hour house arrest and honors -- from keys to cities to honorary degrees -- are being bestowed. On her birthday on Sunday, Irish musician Damien Rice will release Unplayed Piano, a song about one of Suu Kyi's few pleasures under detention until her piano broke down.
"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.
Respect for Suu Kyi and silent support for her goals still appear widespread in Myanmar, but some have given up hope that she can bring about change in face of an entrenched, ruthless military.
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 while 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 US-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, with her close entourage in their late 70s and 80s and the NLD 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," he says.
Steinberg speculates 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."
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