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Journalism of Courage
YANGON, SEPT 21: Myanmar Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi prepared Thursday to again defy the ruling junta’s ban on travelling outside the capital amid tight military surveillance of her party headquarters. Aung San Suu Kyi and Tin Oo would leave by train for the northern city of Mandalay on Thursday evening, National League for Democracy vice chairman Tin Oo said to cheers from a crowd of some 200 supporters at the party headquarters.
"May the mission be successful," they chanted. The pro-democracy campaigners would leave after 4:00 pm (0830 GMT) from Yangon’s central station, Tin Oo said.
Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi did not appear at the headquarters because she was making last-minute preparations for the trip, he said, adding she was not being restricted by the junta.
Plain clothes military intelligence and police were keeping a close watch on and photographing the crowd outside the party headquarters. No uniformed police were present, however, and the authorities were not attempting to blockade the headquarters.
Aung San Suu Kyi and Tin Oo would travel to the former capital Mandalay, 720 kilometres (450 miles) north of here, to investigate reports that party members have been prevented from engaging in political activities, NLD offices been shut and NLD signs taken down by the police, Tin Oo said. Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi said last Friday she would make a trip outside Yangon within 10 days in defiance of the junta’s ban on travel beyond the capital.
The State Peace and Development Council the junta’s official title Thursday slammed the latest events as heightening tensions between the two sides.
"The latest ‘stand-off’ between the SPDC and the NLD and its predictable end, and the predictable media attention, does nothing for the country except to heighten tensions and generate more anger on both sides," it said in a statement.
"The top NLD CEO may get media attention as being brave and strong, but it is the unknown supporters who go to jail," it said. "The supporters go to jail only for empty gestures that gains the party or the people nothing." The junta last Thursday lifted the house arrest placed on Aung San Suu Kyi following a nine-day roadside showdown but barred her from leaving the capital.
Aung San Suu Kyi and the other members of the party’s central executive committee had been placed under virtual house arrest on September 2, after she and other NLD leaders tried to attend a party meeting outside the capital. This triggered a prolonged standoff with the military authorities in which the NLD leaders remained camped by their cars for nine days before being taken back to the capital by security officials.
Aung San Suu Kyi has said she was forced back to Yangon after the standoff, despite statements by the junta saying she had happily returned to the capital. The junta was slammed for its house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi by the international community, led by the United States and former colonial power Britain.
The NLD won a landslide general election victory in 1990, but the junta has never recognised the result and is accused by foreign critics and human rights groups of severe repression of its opponents. Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter of independence hero General Aung San, was put under house arrest for six years and has subsequently had her movements greatly restricted.
