In Myanmar, road blocks on freedom’s trail

The military leadership of Burma is equally stubborn.In 1988, when virtually the entire population rose up against three decades of military repression, the army crushed huge demonstrations by force, taking hundreds of lives.

In 1990, with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest, her party won an overwhelming victory in a surprisingly free parliamentary election. The military reacted by annulling the results and tightening its grip on power.In 1995, she was freed from formal house arrest but found herself surrounded by security officers and restricted in her movements and political activities.

When her husband, a British scholar, was dying of cancer two years ago, the government denied him permission to visit her, suggesting that it would be more appropriate for her to visit him abroad. She refused, convinced that the government would prevent her from returning, and he died without seeing her.

Her current foray out of the capital, Rangoon, demonstrates the weakness of her position as well as its strength. It shows how few options she has to challenge Burma’s leaders but also how little she needs to do to draw international attention.

“She needs to keep people not only in Burma but the rest of the world aware of the continuing repression and deprivation of rights in Burma,” said Sunai Phasuk, a political scientist at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok. “I think she is clever in her timing because there are reports that Western countries are reassessing their policies toward Burma.”Her gesture drew immediate statements of support from the United States and Britain as well as Amnesty International, the London-based rights organisation….

Excerpted from `A War of Endurance For Burma’s Laureate’, by Seth Mydans, New York Times Service, International Herald Tribune, August 29