AUNG SAN SUU KYI
Written to mark acceptance of the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought, July 1991
AUNG SAN SUU KYI
Born 19 June 1945 in Rangoon (Yangon) in Burma (Myanmar) into a family prominent in winning the nation’s independence from the British.
Her father, Aung San – widely regarded as the father of the nation – was assassinated in 1947 a few months before independence was declared. Her mother, Khin Kyi, held several offices in the post-independence government. Suu Kyi was schooled in Delhi, studied at the University of Oxford and worked for the United Nations in New York. In 1972 she married a British academic, Michael Aris. In 1988 she returned to Burma, becoming the focal point of the pro-democracy movement. The ruling military junta put her under house arrest for 15 years between 1989 and 2010 and in 1990 refused to recognize the electoral victory of her political party, the National League for Democracy. Freed from house arrest in 2010, she took up a seat in Parliament two years later at a time of tentative government reform.
Suu Kyi raised her family in the UK before returning to Burma in 1988 to nurse her ailing mother. Her arrival coincided with an uprising against the government that was put down by the army at a cost of several thousand civilian lives. A military junta was then installed, prompting Suu Kyi to address some 500,000 pro-democracy supporters in Yangon and to establish the National League for Democracy (NLD). In 1989 she survived an assassination attempt while on the campaign trail and was then placed under house arrest, thus disqualifying her from standing in multi-party elections the following year.
Although unable to campaign freely, the NLD won over 80 per cent of parliamentary seats but the ruling junta refused to acknowledge the electoral result. Instead, it retained martial law, effectively banned Parliament from meeting, and closed many universities. It was against this backdrop that Suu Kyi made – or at least wrote – the most important speech of her life. Having been awarded the European Parliament’s Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990, she authored the following essay which, owing to her house arrest, she was unable to deliver at the prize ceremony, held in Strasbourg on 10 July 1991. However, in that week the address was printed in numerous international publications including the Bangkok Post, the Far Eastern Economic Review, the New York Times, The Times Literary Supplement and the Times of India.
The lecture helped to keep the flame of Burma’s pro-democracy movement alive over the years that followed, even in the face of Suu Kyi’s ongoing incarceration and continued government suppression. In 1999 she turned down the chance of returning to the UK to visit her dying husband for fear of being refused entry back into her homeland. She remained in detention for all but a few short spells in the 1990s and 2000s despite intense international pressure for her to be freed. However, after further flawed elections, she was released from house arrest in November 2010 and won a seat in the nation’s lower house at polls held in 2012. In the same year she made her first visit abroad since her return to Myanmar 24 years earlier.
An icon of peaceful resistance throughout the world, she has received many prestigious awards in recognition of her campaigning work, including the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. Despite her country having made some progress in democratic reforms since 2012, much work remains to be done. In 2013 Suu Kyi announced her intention to stand for the presidency in 2015. She also took the opportunity to reflect on the forward steps taken since she made her ‘Freedom from Fear’ address, emphasizing that it is a job half done. Addressing the European Parliament in Strasbourg in October 2013, she said:
‘We have made progress since 1990, but we have not made sufficient progress. Our people are just beginning to learn that freedom of thought is possible, but we want to make sure that the right to think freely and to live in accordance with a conscience has to be preserved . . . That is why we insist that the present constitution must be changed to be a truly democratic one.’
IT IS NOT POWER THAT CORRUPTS, BUT FEAR.
Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it. Most Burmese are familiar with the four a-gati, the four kinds of corruption. Chanda-gati, corruption induced by desire, is deviation from the right path in pursuit of bribes or for the sake of those one loves. Dosa-gati is taking the wrong path to spite those against whom one bears ill will, and moga-gati is aberration due to ignorance. But perhaps the worst of the four is bhaya-gati, for not only does bhaya, fear, stifle and slowly destroy all sense of right and wrong, it so often lies at the root of the other three kinds of corruption. Just as chanda-gati, when not the result of sheer avarice, can be caused by fear of want or fear of losing the goodwill of those one loves, so fear of being surpassed, humiliated or injured in some way can provide the impetus for ill will. And it would be difficult to dispel ignorance unless there is freedom to pursue the truth unfettered by fear. With so close a relationship between fear and corruption it is little wonder that in any society where fear is rife corruption in all forms becomes deeply entrenched.
Public dissatisfaction with economic hardships has been seen as the chief cause of the movement for democracy in Burma, sparked off by the student demonstrations 1988.
. . . The students were protesting not just against the death of their comrades but against the denial of their right to life by a totalitarian regime which deprived the present of meaningfulness and held out no hope for the future. And because the students’ protests articulated the frustrations of the people at large, the demonstrations quickly grew into a nationwide movement . . . The people of Burma had wearied of a precarious state of passive apprehension where they were ‘as water in cupped hands’ of the powers that be.
Emerald cool we may be. As water in cupped hands. But oh that we might be. As splinters of glass. In cupped hands.
Glass splinters, the smallest with its sharp, glinting power to defend itself against hands that try to crush, could be seen as a vivid symbol of the spark of courage that is an essential attribute of those who would free themselves from the grip of oppression. Bogyoke Aung San regarded himself as a revolutionary and searched tirelessly for answers to the problems that beset Burma during her times of trial. He exhorted the people to develop courage: ‘Don’t just depend on the courage and intrepidity of others. Each and every one of you must make sacrifices to become a hero possessed of courage and intrepidity. Then only shall we all be able to enjoy true freedom.’
. . . The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations proclaims that ‘every individual and every organ of society’ should strive to promote the basic rights and freedoms to which all human beings regardless of race, nationality or religion are entitled. But as long as there are governments whose authority is founded on coercion rather than on the mandate of the people, and interest groups which place short-term profits above long-term peace and prosperity, concerted international action to protect and promote human rights will remain at best a partially realized struggle . . . The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation’s development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success. Without a revolution of the spirit, the forces which produced the iniquities of the old order would continue to be operative, posing a constant threat to the process of reform and regeneration.
. . . Saints, it has been said, are the sinners who go on trying. So free men are the oppressed who go on trying and who in the process make themselves fit to bear the responsibilities and to uphold the disciplines which will maintain a free society. Among the basic freedoms to which men aspire that their lives might be full and uncramped, freedom from fear stands out as both a means and an end. A people who would build a nation in which strong, democratic institutions are firmly established as a guarantee against state-induced power must first learn to liberate their own minds from apathy and fear.
Always one to practise what he preached, Aung San himself constantly demonstrated courage – not just the physical sort but the kind that enabled him to speak the truth, to stand by his word, to accept criticism, to admit his faults, to correct his mistakes, to respect the opposition, to parley with the enemy and to let people be the judge of his worthiness as a leader. It is for such moral courage that he will always be loved and respected in Burma – not merely as a warrior hero but as the inspiration and conscience of the nation. The words used by Jawaharlal Nehru to describe Mahatma Gandhi could well be applied to Aung San:
‘The essence of his teaching was fearlessness and truth, and action allied to these, always keeping the welfare of the masses in view.’
. . . Fearlessness may be a gift but perhaps more precious is the courage acquired through endeavour, courage that comes from cultivating the habit of refusing to let fear dictate one’s actions, courage that could be described as ‘grace under pressure’ – grace which is renewed repeatedly in the face of harsh, unremitting pressure.
. . . The wellspring of courage and endurance in the face of unbridled power is generally a firm belief in the sanctity of ethical principles combined with a historical sense that despite all setbacks the condition of man is set on an ultimate course for both spiritual and material advancement. It is his capacity for self-improvement and self-redemption which most distinguishes man from the mere brute. At the root of human responsibility is the concept of perfection, the urge to achieve it, the intelligence to find a path towards it, and the will to follow that path if not to the end at least the distance needed to rise above individual limitations and environmental impediments. It is man’s vision of a world fit for rational, civilized humanity which leads him to dare and to suffer to build societies free from want and fear. Concepts such as truth, justice and compassion cannot be dismissed as trite when these are often the only bulwarks which stand against ruthless power.