A solemn and special session of the European Parliament of twelve countries meeting at Strasbourg on 19 July 1991 awarded Aung San Suu Kyi of Burma the 1990 Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. In previous years Nelson Mandela of South Africa, Anatoli Marchenko of the USSR and Alexander Dub
ek of Czechoslovakia had been so honoured. The President of the Parliament, Baron Crespo, spoke in sonorous Spanish and on our earphones we heard the interpreter say, ‘We are awarding this prize to a brave Asian, a woman whose name has been synonymous with the non-violent struggle for freedom and democracy.’
At the end of his speech the President handed a scroll to thirteen-year-old Kim, Aung San Suu Kyi’s younger son, who was on the rostrum with his father Michael Aris, and the brief but emotionally charged ceremony came to a close. Suu, as her friends know her, had not been able to accept the award in person. She was beginning her third year of detention, a captive of Burma’s military regime and under house arrest in Rangoon.
Reflecting on the course of Suu’s life which has brought her this imprisonment and now this honour, I asked myself: How had it come about? What was the source, the wellspring of the spirit upholding her, enabling her to endure this adversity, this oppression? How does she view the prospect of further detention for who knows how long, and the deliberate erosion by the military regime of all she has achieved in the arena of Burmese politics? She entered that arena in 1988 when she established a political party, and it was her party which won an overwhelming victory in the elections of 1990, in spite of her arrest ten months earlier.
To my mind, the firm roots of Suu’s indomitable spirit and unusual personality lie in the ineffaceable memory of her father General Aung San and in her upbringing by her remarkable mother Daw Khin Kyi. The story of General Aung San’s life is part of Burma’s history, well known and often recorded, most recently by his daughter. The early days of his military training in Japan as leader of the legendary ‘Thirty Comrades’ who spearheaded the Japanese advance into British Burma, his turning to support the re-invading Allies after the years of phoney independence under the Japanese, and finally his intense activities after peace was gained, leading to British acceptance of his demand for complete independence – all this has been described in detail by many writers. Daw Khin Kyi’s life, however, is not so well recorded.
Some of my recollections of the general are particularly nostalgic. England was locked in the grip of one of the fiercest winters when he arrived there in January 1947 leading a delegation to discuss the terms for Burma’s independence with the Attlee government. Snow lay deep and uncleared in the heart of London, almost blocking the approach to the Dorchester Hotel where the delegation was housed. Post-war austerity affected all, and the Burmese suffered with other Londoners from the daily cuts in electricity which lasted for hours at a time. There were no open fires, only small electric heaters in the hotel rooms. It was an uncomfortable time, but it was also a time of great hope and enthusiasm.
The general made it a point to meet all the Burmese who were in London – students, those living and working in London, people passing through and long-term visitors like myself. We had a reception for him in a small Burmese restaurant in Soho where he addressed the rather crowded assembly and later talked to each of us informally. ‘The fragrance of his good name’, as we Burmese say, had reached us long before. His impressive reputation, his shining honesty, his adroitness in dealing with opponents, the respect he evoked among his confrères and the highest authorities with whom he had dealt, including the Japanese during the occupation and the British in the last phases of the war and its aftermath, his activities which had brought Burma to this point of discussion for an independence of his fashioning – all this was common knowledge. Each one of us already held this national hero in the highest respect and regard, but his unassuming friendliness won our hearts.
On many evenings when the general had no other engagements I was invited to dine with him and the delegation in their suite at the Dorchester. After the meal, crowding in front of a rather feebly glowing electric fire, there would be talk of pre-war times, the days of their military training in Japan and now the days of hope to come. There was less talk about the actual war years in Burma or the later manoeuvrings and struggles to make the British accept his proposals. It was a time of relaxation for the whole company. For the duration of the war I had been in India working for All India Radio in New Delhi, which had an extensive service in many languages, broadcasting to Japanese-occupied territories throughout Asia. Later I went to San Francisco on the same broadcasting assignment for the US Office of War Information, now the Voice of America. I had not seen these friends for ages, and there was not enough time for us to tell each other all we had seen and done in the intervening years.
In that company, round that faintly glowing fire, there would be the general, his aide, various members of the delegation, a Burmese working at the BBC and sometimes visitors like myself. There was Bo Set Kya, who had been one of the Thirty Comrades in Japan, and who later served in Tokyo as military attaché of the nominally independent Burma of the Japanese occupation. When talk slackened, Bo Set Kya would sing plaintive love songs he had learned there, and we would sing our own Burmese songs. The general would talk about his family, his wife and his three children, the youngest a girl, and would I buy some presents he could take to them? So it was that when, their mission accomplished, the delegation left London, the general took home the gifts I had bought for each member of his family. For Suu there was a large doll. Years later I was surprised and pleased to see she still had it, well preserved.
Some days before their departure, the general prepared a script for broadcasting on the BBC’s Burmese service in which he described what his mission had accomplished. We were to meet him and his aide at a lunch in the BBC restaurant. The lunch was not a success. There was a silence at the table and a thundercloud on the general’s face. The head of the BBC Burmese service, an Englishman, had made cuts and alterations in the English translation of the Burmese text, insisting that these should be made in the original Burmese script. There were certain BBC rules and regulations about the political content of such talks which must be observed, he said. The general was in two minds as to whether he should agree to these cuts or whether he should make his broadcast at all. I had arrived a little late, bringing the presents he had asked me to buy for his family, and gradually the tension and the gloom lifted and the lunch proceeded. The general went to make his report to the Burmese people though he made it clear how much he resented what he regarded as this uncalled-for editing of his script, about which he had not been forewarned. This was the other face of the general.
The work of the mission ended and soon it would be time to leave. At his reception for his English hosts and those who had worked with him, there was a large gathering of guests, members of Parliament of both parties, all the high officials detailed to see to the smooth running of the mission’s work, editors of newspapers, journalists and writers and those interested in Burma and its future, and of course all the Burmese who could come. The general had said the previous night that I must sing at this reception and I had demurred saying I thought it was rather unusual. On the day, I had gone to see an Englishman who had been an administrator in Burma until the Japanese had invaded, a very old friend. Getting back to London from his home in Kent was nightmarishly slow. I and the friend accompanying me were on tenterhooks because we would be late for the reception, our last chance to see the general and our other friends, as we thought. But when we arrived after hastily getting into better clothes the general was waiting. After some refreshments to warm us up he led me to a piano on a small platform and announced to the company, ‘A Burmese girl will sing for you.’ So I sang. Of the three songs I sang, one in English, one in French and the last in Burmese, I now think that I should have sung only the last. But it was only the Burmese there who would have appreciated that song known to all of us. There was no piano accompaniment for this; it needed Burmese musical instruments. It was a song set to a classical mode of music, whose lyrics were a poem written by the Burmese queen Hlaing Hteik Khaung Tin. Wakeful all night with thoughts of the king who has for too long denied her his presence, she hears the palace gong strike the hour of dawn. The gathering applauded politely, and the general came and led me down, telling me my singing had given him great pleasure.
When the delegation left by special plane from a military airport in north London, the country was still snowbound. There was a large group of senior English government officials there to say goodbye. Some of us Burmese also went along and joined the members of the delegation and the others in a large waiting room heated by a roaring fire in an open grate. We sat around and spoke to our friends. After a while the general got up from among the English and came over to talk to us. To me he said with a smile, ‘Why don’t you come back with us?’ Later my companions and I stood in the snow, watching and waving as the delegation walked to the plane and feeling the sadness of a winter’s day and of parting from our friends, especially the general. How were we to know what a short span of life was left for him?
That very year, after the general’s return, with hopes high for a new era in Burma and the rehabilitation of a country devastated by war and Japanese occupation, a political rival destroyed the dream. Assassins stormed into a meeting of the Executive Council, aiming their sten guns first at the general in the centre, and then sweeping to each side, killing eight others. It was 19 July 1947, a day of yearly national remembrance since then, Martyrs’ Day.
General Aung San’s widow, Daw Khin Kyi, took up life again after this disastrous personal and national bereavement. She was appointed Director of Social Welfare in Burma’s now independent government. Immersed in the busy routine of her work she was yet to suffer another blow of fate. The younger of her two sons, Suu’s favourite and much loved brother, was drowned while playing on the bank of a large ornamental lake in the grounds of their house in Rangoon. The trauma of this tragedy for Suu took a long time to dissipate. She has never forgotten this brother as she has never forgotten her father, the study of whose life, writings and exhortations to his people, and the amazing achievements of his thirty-two-year life, has been a continuing obsession. It is her way of getting to know a father whom fate deprived her of knowing in life.
Daw Khin Kyi made her children, from their earliest years, aware of their father’s heritage. His comrades and the members of the army he had founded kept up their ties of friendship with the family. Suu could say with literal truth that she was cradled in the arms of her father’s soldiers. There were others, Burmese of ability, great experience and high standing, whose close association with Daw Khin Kyi strongly influenced the growing children. U Myint Thein, who ended a long and distinguished career as Chief Justice, was her close and lifelong friend. There were the relatives coming and going, her sisters and their families, the general’s brothers and their families, many old friends and many new. An aura of respect, admiration and affection surrounded her and her family.
In keeping with this, Daw Khin Kyi impressed upon the children their obligations to Burmese social and moral values and brought them up in the Buddhist faith. Suu, in my view, is an exemplar of what we Burmese regard as seemly, in matters of dress, comportment, conduct and bearing, in public and in private. To take a small example, the courtesy and deference shown to those older than oneself even by a few years, a slight inclination of the body when passing before them, an economy and refinement of gesture, a tone of voice and a choice of language implying respect. Such traits are ingrained in Suu’s nature, giving her behaviour an unmistakably Burmese complexion, an emphatic and (to the Burmese) an endearing Burmese identity which has never been blurred and which is so apparent, in spite of long years abroad. This has been a major factor in drawing her people to her and in their giving her their most enthusiastic, one could almost say delirious, support.
In 1961 U Nu’s government appointed Daw Khin Kyi as Burma’s ambassador to India, a post she was to keep even after Ne Win’s military coup of 1962, a measure of the respect and esteem in which she was held. At the end of her assignment in 1967 she retired to her home, now on the Inya Lake, a great spread of interlocking natural lakes on whose shores lived many of those prominent in the world of Burmese politics and commerce. This is where Suu is now interned.
Suu was a young girl of fifteen with long thick plaits of hair when she arrived with her mother in New Delhi. Her schooling continued at Lady Sri Ram College, a large, well-run institution. Her circle of Indian friends widened. This was a wonderful opportunity to explore and understand the country of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru. Her father had been here before and had met and consulted Nehru, with whom he came to a close understanding. It was to Nehru’s government that her mother was appointed ambassador.
Among some of the activities arranged for Suu by her mother were Japanese flower arrangement classes and riding lessons at the exercise grounds of the President’s bodyguard. At the riding school she met the children of Indian officials, diplomatic personnel and also Pandit Nehru’s grandsons, Indira Gandhi’s sons Rajiv and Sanjay. There were piano lessons at home at 24 Akbar Road, a large house in extensive grounds with a magnificent garden, housing meant for the most senior Indian officials and, as a special mark of esteem, offered to Daw Khin Kyi and maintained by the government as beautifully as in British days. But Suu’s favourite occupation and passion was reading. For encouraging her great love of books she always remembers with affection U Ohn, who had known her father. He had been a journalist and had represented Aung San’s political party in London, and he was later Burma’s ambassador to Moscow. He among others gave her books, and long lists of books, to read in Burmese and in English. Her passion had started long before she arrived in India.
In Mehrauli, then on the far outskirts of New Delhi, there was a Buddhist centre in a rather dilapidated state from long neglect. For its revival Daw Khin Kyi sought the co-operation of all Buddhists in Delhi including, and especially, the ambassadors of the countries whose professed religion was Buddhism. Those of the faith in Delhi, and some from other parts of India, were able to celebrate the major Buddhist festivals yearly at this centre now restored to life, or just visit it for contemplation, retreat and prayer.
There were a great many other occasions, national and personal, formal and informal, at which Suu assisted. Buddhist monks of Burmese, Thai or Cambodian nationality were regular guests. Her brother, home on holidays from England, would share in these occasions. The respect and affection felt by all Burmese for mother and daughter were mirrored in the feelings of Daw Khin Kyi’s ambassadorial colleagues and members of the Indian government from Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru down. India for Suu was a throbbing, vital experience. Her bonds of remembrance and love for this country have remained strong to this day.
The British High Commissioner in Delhi at this time was Sir Paul (later Lord) Gore-Booth. During his previous posting as ambassador to Burma, he and his wife Patricia had come to know Daw Khin Kyi and her family well. Now the friendship was renewed, and when it was time for Suu to go for further studies to Oxford University they offered to look after her, standing in as parents so to speak. She became part of the family, a sister to their two sons and two daughters. At their house she got to know many of their personal friends and to meet the politicians and officials of the government who enjoyed their hospitality. She took a great interest in their appearance, behaviour, talk and idiosyncrasies, these members of a wider adult world she was about to enter.
Suu usually went to her mother in New Delhi for the summer holidays, but one year she came to stay with me in Algiers. I had been transferred from New Delhi’s United Nations Information Centre to establish such a centre in Algeria, newly independent since the signing of the Treaty of Evian with Charles de Gaulle’s government in 1962. The country was very slowly recovering from its eight-year struggle for independence from the French. Not surprisingly, in the city of Algiers there was great scarcity of accommodation, many devastated areas, few hotels in good shape and drastically curtailed services of all kinds. Newly opening embassies, United Nations offices and incoming commercial concerns, as well as Algerians themselves, were desperate for housing and working quarters. French settlers of long standing had left in great numbers but others were arriving, young men on various jobs in lieu of military service, men and women teachers and workers on aid projects, and just visitors.
Suu arrived a few days after Houari Boumedienne had ousted Ahmed Ben Bella in an exemplary, bloodless coup. She was much more interested in getting to meet Algerians and in what was happening in the country than in the many parties to which she was invited. She had a suitcase full of books for study. We got in touch with an Algerian organization which ran several projects to help those affected by their long struggle. The young man in charge of one came to explain his project. Algerians and young men and women of every nationality were welcome, he said, to help in the building of houses for the widows of freedom fighters. Suu went to live and work in that large camp for a number of weeks. There was a Russian instructor, and her co-workers were young people from Algeria, France, Lebanon, Holland and Germany. There were meals and accommodation but no pay. Her Algerian friends took her to a wedding in the Kabyle mountains. We went for a long trip to the edge of the Sahara but no further since in summer the heat was too great. Another trip was to a city of Roman ruins where on the flagstones of the arena of the open-air theatre loyalists had inscribed in large letters ‘Vive Ben Bella’. Suu was taken on a trip to Morocco and touched the southern shore of Spain. She came back to her reading and later returned to Oxford well content.
After gaining her degree, followed by a short spell of teaching and another of research with the historian Hugh Tinker, Suu came to me in New York. I had returned to the UN headquarters there after four years’ duty in Algiers. Frank Trager, a family friend, was Professor of International Affairs at New York University where Suu planned to do her postgraduate studies. He had spent some years in Burma on a programme of American aid and had a wide-ranging interest in the countries of South-east Asia and the Far East where he had done much travelling. His book Burma: From Kingdom to Republic had just been published. He took a keen interest in Suu’s progress. Getting to and from New York University meant a long bus ride there and back from our apartment in mid-town Manhattan, and it was a trial for Suu, who was given to giddiness on bus rides. There were also the hazards from toughs who frequented her route from the bus-stop across the park to Washington Square and the classes she had to attend. The UN was about six minutes’ walk from where we lived. Why shouldn’t she try for a job there and do her studies later? After applications, recommendations, interviews and the usual delays and difficulties, Suu was in. She worked there for three years, the last two as part of a small, select staff group supporting the deliberations and activities of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions. The members of this small, compact committee were appointed not as representatives of their countries but as experts on financial matters. The programmes and budgets of the United Nations and all its branches as well as all the Specialized Agencies, such as the WHO and the FAO, were submitted to this committee for appraisal, comment, modification and final approval. It was extremely hard work, but most interesting for its close examination of the financial implications of all UN activities, and for its members, people with quite exceptional minds. Suu came to know them well.
Staff members of the UN often devoted their evenings and weekends to voluntary aid activities. Belleview is part of a large New York hospital, a short ten-minute bus ride from where we lived in Manhattan. It is mainly concerned with the city’s poorest incurables and derelicts, who are brought in when life becomes too much for them, a temporary refuge for those on the verge of physical and mental collapse. Men and women are always needed to help with programmes of reading and companionship. Suu chose to volunteer many hours of her time every week for this. It was in the same tradition of service as her mother’s.
U Thant of Burma was the UN Secretary-General at this time. Some of our most enjoyable times were the Sunday lunches at his large house overlooking the Hudson River in the suburb of Riverdale, about an hour’s ride from where we lived in Manhattan. Other Burmese and friends would be there, a convivial company, and Burmese food much to our taste would be served. On special occasions such as the birthday of one of his grandchildren, the grounds of the house would be decked out to receive the Burmese, and also the heads of many of the permanent delegations to the UN. The food as always was superbly Burmese. U Thant and his family would be warmly welcoming. But we often observed how much more we liked the smaller gatherings, though even there we could never get into animated discussions on people and politics, the state of the world and the problems U Thant was handling. His duties as host seemed to preclude this.
Invitations from U Soe Tin, the permanent delegate of Burma to the UN at that time, were a little different. He too lived in Riverdale, in a house less imposing than U Thant’s. During sessions of the General Assembly lasting from the second week of September to mid-December, he would be occupied with work, and meals and receptions for the Burmese and other delegations. At other times of the year he would ask the New York Burmese to his house for Buddhist festivals. We liked him and his wife and children. He was a liberal type who did not divide us into sheep and goats. The goats were those suspected of being critical of what was happening in Burma under the Ne Win regime and usually were left severely alone. At his house it was possible to discuss, debate and argue, sometimes heatedly but in the main with much good nature.
During one UN General Assembly, Suu and I received an invitation to lunch at his house. Some members of the delegation had said they would like to meet us. Pleasant and polite as U Soe Tin always was, I felt there was more to this invitation than met the eye. We arrived at his house in Riverdale about midday. The large rectangular living room filled with plants and flowers and an excess of black-and-gold Burmese lacquer had been rearranged so that sofas and chairs were placed against the wall with large coffee tables in front of them. And on those sofas and chairs was ranged a whole battery of Burmese ambassadors attending the current General Assembly. We were introduced to those we had not met before, and Suu was led to one end of the room to a seat between two of these men. I was given a place between two others not far from where the head of the delegation, Colonel Lwin, had taken his seat. U Soe Tin’s wife passed glasses of fruit juice, set large bowls of crisps and other small eats on the coffee tables, then retreated to the room next door to put the finishing touches to a meal bound to be worthy of such distinguished guests. We made some slight, inconsequential remarks and so did the others. U Soe Tin was smiling politely but looked uneasy. It became clear to me that the company was preparing to sit in judgement on Suu. But for what? I didn’t quite know. The chief delegate led the attack. How was it that Suu was working for the UN? What passport was she using? Since her mother was no longer ambassador, Suu should have given up her diplomatic passport. Was it true that she had not done so? She must be aware that she was holding her diplomatic passport unlawfully. It was most irregular and should be put right as soon as possible.
The whole company listened to this tirade with a sort of sycophantic deference, turning their eyes on Suu and murmuring agreement. Suu’s calm and composure were for me very reassuring. She replied with great dignity and in very quiet tones. She had long ago applied for a new passport to the embassy in London but had not received a reply up to now. She could not say what could be the reason for this most extraordinary delay. She had come to New York to study and therefore had used her old passport. In order to live she had to find work, and she had been fortunate to find a job at the United Nations where her passport had been necessary to prove she was Burmese. She was still waiting for the embassy in London to send her the passport she had applied for months before. She would be most happy to surrender the one she was now holding when the new one arrived. She was sure all the uncles in the room would understand that one must have a passport, of whatever kind, to live and work in a foreign country. She spoke in the politest of tones and in exquisite Burmese.
The ambassador from London then stood up to confirm that Suu had indeed applied months ago for a new passport but as usual the application had been sent on to Rangoon. He did not know why there had been this delay of months in receiving a response. All of us in that room knew, of course, of the bureaucratic confusion and incompetence in Burma which had created similar delays. The ambassadors now joined in to agree that Suu had no other choice of action. The chief delegate’s demeanour became non-committal. Making an apologetic noise he remarked that he had not quite understood the situation, but he would now personally see to it on his return that things were speeded up at the passport office in Rangoon. These were Suu’s elders, but not necessarily her betters, I thought. Now it was my turn to say with a smile, ‘The day will come, soon we hope, when passports will no longer be necessary’, and we went in to lunch. Another friend, an official in the permanent delegation, with whom we felt free to talk about the situation in Burma, would say teasingly when he felt that Suu’s remarks were too boldly critical, ‘You not only have the courage of your convictions, Suu, you have the courage of your connections.’ He meant that being the daughter of General Aung San and Daw Khin Kyi she could not be taken down. I felt that she was their daughter in the flesh but more truly in the spirit.
At the end of her third year of service in the UN Secretariat Suu made a choice. She decided that a husband and children would be greatly preferable to a career in the UN, however brilliant it was promising to be. And so began a different life. The story from now on is well known. She spent a year in the eastern Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan where her husband Michael Aris had long been working as tutor to the royal family and translator to the government. Bhutan had become a member of the UN while Suu was in New York, and she immediately found work advising Bhutan’s Foreign Minister on UN matters. She and Michael then returned to England for the birth of their first son, Alexander. Michael started his doctorate at London University and soon after took up his academic career at Oxford. A second son, Kim, came in 1977. Life went on placidly with raising the family and regular visits with the children to her mother in Rangoon.
Along with caring for her family Suu began to do some writing. With her passion for reading she had collected a large number of books in English and French, a language which interested her. Michael too had his expanding library of books concerned with his Tibetan studies and research, and so their house in Oxford overflowed with books. The children too were growing into readers. Now Suu began to think about writing a biography of her father. She began an intensive study of Japanese. A large library of books in English and Burmese about Burma, and books in Japanese and English about Japan, began to accumulate. She began research for a book about her father’s life. She also started to make plans for a doctoral thesis at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. A determined diligence is how I would describe her activities during this time.
In 1985 she accepted the offer of a scholarship from the University of Kyoto in order to pursue research on the Japanese part of her father’s career. She met members of the Japan–Burma Association who in turn put her in contact with those still alive who had known her father. Everyone she met could tell her something of those days. Her knowledge of Japanese grew and her contacts widened. Michael at this time was on a fellowship at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies in Simla in northern India. Their older son was with him while Suu had their younger son with her. She invited me in 1986 to stay with her and Kim at the International House of Kyoto University for a period of three months. Her relations with the Japanese and the scholars of many nationalities, on Japanese fellowships for a great variety of studies, were close and most cordial. She felt she was accomplishing much. The next year she joined her husband in Simla and the family was together again. There Suu was also appointed to a fellowship at the institute where Michael was working. I happened to be in India early in 1987 and had the pleasure of a month with them in their apartment at the institute, the great building which in pre-independence days was the residence and summer retreat of the British viceroys and their staff.
That year her mother Daw Khin Kyi arrived in London for the removal of cataracts in both eyes. These operations were successful and it was a happy time for her in spite of the strain of the treatment. Suu interrupted her work in Simla and came to care for her mother. Her brother, now living and working in America, came for ten days. I was in London and was able to see her almost every day. Other friends, old and new, came to call, and there was much cheerful conversation and laughter and reminiscing over old times. Her flat was filled with fruits and flowers and cards wishing her well and a quick recovery. Suu had visited her mother regularly in Burma before and after her marriage. Daw Khin Kyi had seen her grandsons grow up to the age when they could be initiated as novices into the Buddhist monkhood. This traditional ceremony which wins much merit for those arranging it had been held the previous year at her house in Rangoon. She returned after two months to Burma in good spirits, her eyesight much improved, writing to her many friends to say how much she had enjoyed their visits and her time in London. But in late March of the next year, 1988, barely ten months after her return, she suffered a severe stroke. Suu, Michael and their two sons were in Oxford then, back from their Indian sojourn in September of 1987, settling back to their old academic life when the news came. Suu took the next flight to Rangoon to care for her mother again, this time in her last illness.
The events of 1988 in Burma are well known. Trouble had been brewing since the early months of the year when student demonstrators had been shot, and greater demonstrations and violence were to come. August 8 was the day when great numbers marched, demanding democracy. The shooting and killing in the government’s suppression of these protest marches claimed many more victims than the slaughter in Tienanmen Square in Peking a year later. Suu could not stand aside. Her father was not there to lead his people against this new tyranny. As her father’s daughter she must now act and be involved.
When Suu started on her round of campaign tours all over Burma as the general secretary of her newly founded political party, the National League for Democracy, it was not only to set up centres for the party but to arouse the Burmese from the habit of fear into which they had fallen over the years of Ne Win’s repressive military rule, which in the latter years had worn a deceptive civilian cloak. She has a perfect command of the English language more than matched by her brilliant and inspired use of Burmese. With Burmese she reaches the hearts and minds of her people, like her father before her. With English she interprets her ideas and actions to the world. The first is of more immediate importance in her effort to awake a people sunk in the apathy of years and only recently roused to protest. This has involved the most strenuous physical and mental exertion attended by obvious as well as hidden and incalculable risks and dangers, more especially since the military government’s decree that an assembly of more than four people was illegal and could be dispersed by force.
On one occasion, presumably in accordance with this ruling, an army captain stopped Suu and a party of her campaigners at gunpoint, threatening to open fire should they advance. With great calm Suu told her companions to step aside and wait while she took the road alone. It was her instant decision that only one life must be put at risk, and that life must be hers alone. It was a bold move and it was successful, for at the very last moment a major on the sidelines intervened and prevented the shooting. But it was like walking on a knife’s edge. Talking at times about her upbringing, Suu would say that it had been very strict, perhaps too much so, but that it had often stood her in good stead in many of life’s unpleasant and unpredictable surprises. This was certainly one of them, and not the last.
Hearing and reading about this encounter again put me in mind of Daw Khin Kyi. Many a time she had needed physical courage, quick wits and decision, ingenuity, persuasive powers and diplomatic tact to save a situation or avert disaster. Many were the stories she told us of such occasions and Suu knew them all. Even in her life after retirement she had needed the utmost discretion and fine judgement. General Aung San’s life had of course been a long exercise in physical courage and mental agility.
In exploring the sources of Suu’s character and strength of personality I have not troubled myself with looking for weaknesses and blemishes. She surely has some. Who is there in this world who has none? There are, however, those whose virtues so far outweigh their faults that the latter mean little in the sum of the whole, and for me Suu is one of those. Let others point out her faults, such as they are, if they wish. I am not at all concerned with what is called a balanced assessment of character. My aim has been to trace the lines leading from the parents to the child, the soil, so to speak, that nurtured this unusual and outstanding growth and flowering.
Suu has an integrity, a steadfastness of purpose, an unswerving determination and single-minded persistence in attaining a goal, a seriousness going hand in hand with a strong sense of humour, a dignity and resolve in the face of persecution and adversity. Her years of study in Oxford, her married life and the upbringing of her children, her care and concern for the weak and the elderly, her wide-ranging and far-flung friendships, cultivated and continuing though smothered at the moment under the heavy hand of her gaolers, her increasing new interests, her pursuit of academic excellence inspired, she says, by her husband’s example, and the weathering, shall we say, of her later years of life – all these have brought about a maturity, an adaptability, an ability and a willingness to take on challenges of more than parochial significance. In a word, she has become the hope and inspiration of an oppressed people. Though time seems to stand still for her at this moment, the further growth and flowering of her spirit cannot be stifled. Perhaps even her oppressors have more than a sneaking admiration for her. In her efforts to dispel what she calls ‘the miasma of fear’ overshadowing her people, she is wrestling, as the Bible puts it, ‘against spiritual wickedness in high places’. She has indeed been given a great cause and with it the mental and physical, moral and spiritual vigour to do battle for it. May hers be the victory.