The Lady of Burma

Instead of commenting on the disgraceful mud-slinging happening in our own post-election backyard between the ANC and the DA, let’s journey halfway around the world and catch up on a very strange situation playing out in the southeast Asian country of Myanmar.

It’s in the commercial capital of the country Yangon (formerly called Rangoon) where Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi finds her ‘home’. For years, Suu Kyi has been the most prominent opponent of Myanmar’s long-running and oppressive military regime. Under local law, Suu Kyi is eligible to be released from prison at the beginning of June. The democracy icon and Nobel Peace Prize winner, who has spent 13 of the past 19 years under house arrest, could be jailed for up to another five years if found guilty. She remains hugely popular with the Burmese masses, and the trial is widely seen as an excuse for the regime to keep her out of the way during elections scheduled for next year. In 1990 her National League for Democracy won a landslide victory in Burma’s last general election, but the military junta refused to honour the result. Suu Kyi gave numerous speeches calling for freedom and democracy, but the military regime responded with brute force, shooting and killing up to 10 000 demonstrators – including students, women and children. Then in mid-May, Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested and sent to jail, charged in connection with an American man who allegedly sneaked uninvited into the compound where she is being held in Yangon. The charges are absurd -- it is the Burmese military, now accusing her of breach of house arrest, which is responsible for the security of the compound. The hearing itself was humdrum: a policeman gave evidence for the prosecution. At the end of the proceedings, she asked the court if she would be violating any security laws if she addressed the diplomats. Receiving a negative answer, she called out to them in English, greeting them and saying: “I hope to meet you again in better times.” It was unclear whether diplomats will also be allowed to attend subsequent hearings. But it did not change the gloomy consensus that the trial itself is a fix. As with the release of Nelson Mandela from years of prison in South Africa, the freedom of Aung San Suu Kyi from years of unjust detention will bring a new beginning to Burma and hope for democracy. Let’s hope this month could be that historical time for change.

ROBBIE STAMMERS Editor