Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was reunited yesterday with her youngest son, whom she last saw a decade ago, in an emotional moment at the Yangon airport 10 days after she was released from detention.
Kim Aris, 33, was finally granted a visa by the military regime after waiting for several weeks in Thailand.
Just before walking into the airport terminal, the 65-year old Aung San Suu Kyi, who was released on Nov. 13 after more than seven years under house arrest, told reporters: “I am very happy.”
PHOTO: EPA
Tears welled up in Aung San Suu Kyi’s eyes when she first saw her son. A smiling Aung San Suu Kyi slipped her arm around his waist as the two posed briefly for photographers and then they walked out of the airport holding hands.
Clearly showing support for his mother’s cause, Aris bared his left arm before airport security and the public to reveal a tattoo of the flag and symbol of Aung San Suu Kyi’s party, the National League for Democracy. Aung San Suu Kyi looked at it closely and smiled. The flag and symbol feature a fighting peacock and a star.
Through her lawyer Nyan Win, Aung San Suu Kyi thanked the authorities for issuing the visa to her son, who resides in Britain and last saw his mother in December 2000. He has repeatedly been denied visas ever since by the ruling junta.
Aung San Suu Kyi, who won the 1991 Nobel Peace prize for her nonviolent struggle for democracy, was first arrested in 1989 when Kim was 11 and elder son Alexander 16. She has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years.
In an interview last week, Aung San Suu Kyi acknowledged that her years of political work had been difficult for her family.
“I knew there would be problems,” she said of her mid-life decision to go into politics. “If you make the choice you have to be prepared to accept the consequences.”
Aung San Suu Kyi, who was largely raised overseas, married the British academic Michael Aris and raised their two sons in England.
However, in 1988, at age 43, she returned home to take care of her ailing mother as mass protests were breaking out against military rule. She was quickly thrust into a leadership role, mainly because she was the daughter of Aung San, the country’s martyred founding father.
Elder son Alexander accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on his mother’s behalf in 1991 — while she was serving an earlier term of house arrest — and reportedly lives in the US.
Michael Aris died of prostate cancer in 1999 at age 53, after having been denied visas to see his wife for the three years leading up to his death. Aung San Suu Kyi has never met her two grandchildren.
While her family supported her, she said her sons had suffered particularly badly.
“They haven’t done very well after the breakup of the family, especially after their father died, because Michael was a very good father,” she said. “Once he was no longer there, things were not as easy as they might have been.”
However, she added that she always had their support.
“My sons are very good to me,” she said. “They’ve been very kind and understanding all along.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS