Aung San Suu Kyi (2 page)

She notices a skeptical expression on my face and continues: “I think freedom has two aspects. The first is your own state of mind. If you feel free, you
are
free. I think sometimes if you are alone, your time is your own
and therefore you are more free. The other one is the environmental aspect. Is your environment free? And mine is certainly not because I don't think Burma is really a free country.”

I meet her at a time when revolutions and popular uprisings are changing the political structure in much of the Arab world. The Burmese regime tries to block information about these developments from reaching the people, scared that the turmoil could spill over to Burma, but everyone knows about it anyway.

“They are not allowed to publish anything about it in the newspapers here,” says Aung San Suu Kyi, “but a lot of people have heard about it. On the radio and through the Internet. However totalitarian a government is, people do get to know what's going on. That's very different from when I was arrested the first time, in 1989. As a matter of fact it's very different even from seven years ago when I was arrested the latest time.”

Obviously the regime is so eager to control the news about the Arab uprisings because there are similarities to the revolt in Burma in 1988—the events that finally made Aung San Suu Kyi step forward and become the leading figure of the democracy movement. But she also sees some differences.

“Everywhere, all over the world, people do get tired of oppression and dictatorship. This kind of thing always happens in one way or the other. But I think people have to remember that it has taken years for this kind of development. For example, Egypt has been under military rule since the early fifties. And to some extent it's the same with Tunisia. The demonstrations seem to have changed things rather quickly, but you have to consider the long years it has taken for these countries to arrive at this point. But the military in Egypt decided not to shoot at the people. That's very different from what happened in Burma.”

The last time Aung San Suu Kyi was free, for almost two years in 2002 and 2003, she was allowed to continue her political work. NLD organized a number of tours in the country and tens of thousands of people came to listen to her speeches, though the
junta officially claimed, falsely, that her star was falling and that interest in her politics was diminishing. This time she says that no restrictions are placed upon her. She is supposed to be free to do whatever she wants and to travel freely around the country. But the junta has stated this before, without showing any obvious indications of a guilty conscience when the generals failed to live up to it. When I met her in February 2011 she still hadn't tested the limits.

“My schedule has been full with meetings and appointments in Rangoon and my office,” she says, “so there has simply not been enough time to travel around the country.”

She has met an almost endless string of party members, diplomats, foreign politicians, and journalists. Her face has been on the cover, or her name in the headlines, of the
Times
,
Financial Times
, Al Jazeera, BBC, and several other international media outlets. She has also met with many other political groups in Burma, both other parties and representatives from the country's major ethnic minorities.

From her first comments and interviews it was clear that Aung San Suu Kyi was more searching, less sure about the political environment than she had been seven years ago. As she's done so many times before, she talked about the importance of dialogue. “I want to hear the voice of the people,” she said in her first speech. “After that we will decide what we want to do. I want to work with all democratic forces.”

The last comment was a direct reference to the fact that the democracy movement in Burma split over the junta-controlled elections held only days before her release. A few democratic parties decided to field candidates in the elections, among them the National Democratic Front (NDF), a group founded by former members of her own NLD, which, together with several of the ethnic minority groups, had decided to boycott the elections. Suu Kyi tells me that she has met with people from the NDF as well but only on “a personal level,” not as representatives from the party.

After her release she also proposed a new “Panglong conference” among the junta, the democratic movement, and the ethnic minorities. Back in 1940 her father, Aung San, held a conference in the town of Panglong, where he convinced several of the minorities to join the new Union of Burma and accept a federal constitution with great respect for the minorities' rights to self-determination. Many groups have called for a new meeting like that to deal with Burma's present problems.

With her trademark capacity for forgiveness, Aung San Suu Kyi has stated that she doesn't bear any grudges nor feel any hatred for her oppressors,
despite her long house arrest. She wants to talk with the generals, not get back at them, and she has repeatedly said that she respects them as human beings though she “is critical of some of their actions.” The junta leader and the state propaganda in Burma have spent the past twenty-one years trying to portray Suu Kyi as a dogmatic Western-influenced troublemaker. Her plea for reconciliation and for a dialogue including all ethnic groups stands in almost amusing contradiction to this.

So far her release has brought at least one major change to Burma: the democratic movement has been rejuvenated. It's obvious when you see the slightly chaotic activity on the ground floor of the headquarters as well as Aung San Suu Kyi's own agenda. Right after my interview with her, she would meet with two hundred young activists from all around Burma. After the meeting they will go back home and start organizing youth groups.

“Obviously I wasn't here during my arrest so I can't compare,” she says, “but I think it's more energetic now. The day after my release I said I wanted to build up a new network and that has taken off. Not that everyone is joining NLD, but we have found that there are small groups in the civil society all over the place and they connect to us. They want to be a part of our network, and that's very refreshing to see.”

She's hopeful but very wary of predicting any specific outcomes. That's a lesson every Burmese learns. Over the years there have been so many hopeful moments and so many crushed dreams—the students' revolt in 1974, the uprising in 1988, the saffron revolution in 2007, and the many times Aung San Suu Kyi has been released, only to be put under house arrest again when she becomes a threat to the military rulers of Burma.

“My hope for the short-term future is that we can continue to rebuild our organization and change more than we have done so far,” she says. “But the only thing I can predict is that we will continue to work very hard. What I hope for is that the rest of the world continues to give us their strong support. That you don't let yourself be fooled by superficial changes on the political scene in Burma.”

The last comment is aimed at those forces in the international community who have argued that the Burma strategy has to change. Before the elections in November 2010 some foreign diplomats and businessmen active in Rangoon claimed that the elections should be, if not respected, at least
accepted by the rest of the world. Further, they argued that anyone who wanted change in Burma had to play along with the junta's strategy and work more with the parties that participated in the elections than with the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi. The same argument was used against the sanctions championed by the United States and European Union.

During our conversation it becomes clear that Aung San Suu Kyi finds this debate futile. A new parliament has been elected and a supposedly civil government is in place instead of the military junta. But the flawed election process gave 80 percent of the seats in the parliament to the junta-controlled party, Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). Only four out of thirty ministers in the cabinet do not have a background as high-ranking officers in the military. And many experts on Burmese politics think that the former junta leader Than Shwe is running the show from behind the scenes.

“I don't exclude the possibility that some positive things may come out of this process,” Suu Kyi says, “but it's far too early to change any policies. They can put anyone under arrest in Burma. At any time. So when people talk as if there has been progress in Burma I want them to think about this. We don't know who will be arrested and for what reasons. That is not the kind of situation you expect to find in a democracy.”

Since then there have been signs of greater openness in Burma. The draconian media laws have been at least slightly lightened, a number of new magazines and papers has started, and Aung San Suu Kyi has several times met with the new president Thein Sein to discuss a possible way forward. She has, even if with great caution and a handful of objections, described it as the most promising change in a Southeast Asian country since the '80s.

As I write this, the regime has also released around two hundred political prisoners and there has been talk about the release of at least four hundred more. Aung San Suu Kyi's party, NLD, has also been allowed to re-register and run for some seats in the parliament, after being disbanded before the elections in 2010. An adviser to the president even hinted that she herself might be able to run for a political position, something that so far has been a complete no-go for the regime.

“I'm a skeptical optimist,” says Aung Zaw, editor in chief for
The Irrawaddy
magazine, who for fifteen years has covered Burma issues from the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. Aung Zaw has lived in exile for
twenty-three years since the uprising in 1988, and for the first time he felt that there might be an opportunity to go back to his homeland. Not now, but if the speed of change continues, hopefully he will in a few years' time.

So, even if there are thousands of scenarios in which the future for Burma is black, there are still some signs that things are moving in the right direction.

Aung San Suu Kyi is of course aware of the risks. Every time she has been free or partly free, the military has put her back in house arrest before she has become too powerful for their taste.

“I'm not fearful,” she said in an interview with BBC after her latest release. “Not in the sense that I think to myself that I won't do this or I won't do that because they'll put me under arrest again. But I know that there's always the possibility that I might be re-arrested. It's not something that I particularly wish for, because if you're placed under arrest, you can't work as much as you can when you're not under arrest.”

House arrest or not, the only thing one can state with any certainty is that the junta will never be able to get rid of her. She will remain a unifying power for those who desire to see a different Burma, and the junta fears her more than anything else. Thanks to her ability to unite the many political and ethnic groups in Burma, she is and will remain the foremost threat against their prolonged monopoly of power. This is the reason they have kept her under house arrest for fifteen of the last twenty-one years. Her person is so charged with political meaning nowadays that it has even become taboo to say her name. In the streets in Rangoon she is called the Lady. In the state-controlled newspapers she has had several less flattering names over the years and has often been referred to as Miss Michael Aris or “the woman who was married to a foreigner.” This also changed when the dialogue started with the new president. It is still forbidden to publish anything about her that has not been cleared by the Ministry of Information, but she is not being calumnied in the same way.

Aung San Suu Kyi's symbolic, almost iconic significance stretches far beyond the borders of Burma. She was imprisoned for the first time in 1989, only a few months after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Soviet communism. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and has since then been a symbol for the worldwide international struggle for democracy and human rights.

She has attained the same status as Nelson Mandela did during the apartheid regime in South Africa, and the similarities between them are many. Both are the most brightly shining political stars in their respective countries. Both have spent a great part of their lives in captivity. Both have also been forced to make enormous personal sacrifices in the struggle for freedom. When Aung San Suu Kyi was first confined to house arrest, her sons Alexander and Kim were sixteen and twelve years old, respectively. Since then they have only met their mother for brief periods of time. During the latest house arrest, they did not see her at all. Her husband, Michael Aris, died of cancer in 1999 without their being able to say farewell to each other. Aung San Suu Kyi has several times been offered the opportunity to leave the country but she has refused, fully aware that she would never be able to return as long as the junta are in power. She would be compelled to live her life in exile, which would mean abandoning her people.

At the same time activists all over the world have become involved in her cause. Artists and musical groups such as Madonna, U2, and REM have dedicated songs to her. Nobel Prize winners such as Václav Havel and Desmond Tutu have supported her in their writings and political campaigns.

Despite all the attention, campaigns, newspaper articles, and television programs, Aung San Suu Kyi has for most people remained just a symbol, a mirror that can reflect almost any dream or hope. So who in reality is the woman behind the image? Which are Aung San Suu Kyi's driving forces and what is it that makes her so interesting to the world at large? In what way is she significant when it comes to the possibility of Burma's breaking free from the grasp of the dictatorship? What is it that makes her continue the struggle against the junta, year after year, despite the enormous strain?

When I finally left the NLD head office, I realized I had been very lucky. Since Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house arrest during most of the years I have followed the developments in Burma, a meeting with her seemed unlikely. This time, however, it wasn't. It felt strange to meet someone I seemed to know so well, but only from my interviews with her friends and colleagues and her own writing. I'm not the right person to judge but I think it worked out pretty well: much of what people have told me over the years was confirmed, not contradicted, by my personal interaction with the Lady.