A hero for my anmar

Just as Aung San Suu Kyi is Myanmar8217;s most famous heroine, her husband Michael Aris was one of its heroes. Michael was not simply the Oxford don who supported his extraordinary wife; he gave his life to the cause of freedom in that suffering country, a sacrifice the people of Myanmar will, I believe, acknowledge when they are finally rid of their tyrants. He was a gentle, private, modest man whose own words say much about his bravery. 8220;It was a quiet evening in Oxford, like many others, the last day of March 1988,8221; he wrote. 8220;Our sons were already in bed and we were reading when the telephone rang. Suu picked up the phone to learn than her mother had suffered a severe stroke. She put the phone down and at once started to pack. I had a premonition that our lives would change forever.8221; Thus, Michael began his moving introduction to Freedom from Fear, a collection of essays by and about Aung San Suu Kyi. They had met in their student days at Oxford. 8220;From her early childhood,8221; he wrote, 8220;Suu had beendeeply preoccupied with the question of what she might do to help her people. She never forgot for a minute that she was the daughter of Burma8217;s national hero. And yet prior to 1988 it had never been her intention to strive for anything quite so momentous.8221;

8220;Recently I read again the 187 letters she sent me in the eight months before we were married on January 1, 1972. Again and again she expressed her worry that her family and people might misinterpret our marriage and see it as a lessening of her devotion to them. She constantly reminded me that one day, should she have to return to Burma, that she counted on my support at that time, not as her due, but as a favour.8221; Michael described her departure for Myanmar that March day as 8220;a day of reckoning8221;.

He wrote the words quoted above while Aung San Suu Kyi was in her third year of house arrest in Yangon, an arbitrary sentence imposed by the military dictatorship and which lasted, officially, until 1995 but which continues, in one form or another, tothe present day. During that time he and their sons, Alexander and Kim, both in their twenties have been seldom allowed by the regime to visit her. The last to see her was Kim in September 1997. Michael had not seen her since December 1995. JOHN PILGER, The Guardian News Service