Free Aung San Suu Kyi
by Danny Fisher
Last week, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, leader of the National League for Democracy in Myanmar (Burma) and winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, celebrated her 62nd birthday. She is currently serving her third term of house arrest, and has been under some form of detention for a total of twelve years. On the webpage for their Free Aung San Suu Kyi campaign, MTV and the Burma Campaign UK add:
- Her phone line is cut and her post is intercepted. Armed soldiers behind a barricade of barbed wire turn away any visitors.
The brutal generals who rule Burma have already made one attempt on her life, attacking a convoy she was travelling in on May 30th 2003. Up to 100 of her supporters were beaten to death in the attack. Aung San Suu Kyi’s car managed to speed away, but she was later arrested.
The United Nations has declared her current detention arbitrary. Please take a moment to call for her freedom by emailing Senior General Than Shwe, ruler of Myanmar, at http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/mtvaction.html.
It is all so extraordinarily sad. Burma used to be the happiest country in the world — the inspiration for E. F. Schumacher’s ideas on Buddhist Econommics, and his subsequent book “Small is Beautiful: As if people mattered.”
But then came Pol Pot, and the ruinousness continues. And now in Myanmar/Burma, it seems people don’t matter.