Aung San Suu Kyi

Current Situation

Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace laureate, has come to symbolise the struggle of Burma’s people to be free.

She has spent more than 15 years in detention, most of it under house arrest. She was released from her current third period of detention on Saturday 13th November 2010.

However, there are still more than 2,200 political prisoners in Burma and none of the repressive laws allowing the dictatorship to detain people without trial and restrict other freedoms have been repealed following the sham election on 7 November or under the new constitution.

“My release should not be looked at as a major breakthrough for democracy. For all people in Burma to enjoy basic freedom - that would be the major breakthrough.” 

~Aung San Suu Kyi speaking after her release in 2002.

Early Life

Aung San Suu Kyi was born on June 19th, 1945, daughter of Burma’s independence hero, Aung San, who was assassinated when she was only two years old.

Aung San Suu Kyi was educated in Burma, India, and the United Kingdom. While studying at Oxford University, she met Michael Aris, a Tibet scholar who she married in 1972. They had two sons, Alexander and Kim.

Return to Burma

Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988 to nurse her dying mother, and soon became engaged in the country’s nationwide democracy uprising. The military regime responded to the uprising with brute force, killing up to 5,000 demonstrators on 8th August 1988.

Following a military coup on 18th September 1988, on 24th September 1988 a new pro-democracy party, the National League for Democracy, was formed. Aung San Suu Kyi was appointed General Secretary.  Aung San Suu Kyi gave numerous speeches calling for freedom and democracy, and political activities continued across the country.

1990 Elections

Facing increasing domestic and international pressure, the dictatorship was forced to call a general election, held in 1990.

As Aung San Suu Kyi began to campaign for the NLD, she and many others were detained by the regime. Aung San Suu Kyi was banned from personally standing in the election. Despite conditions around the elections being far from free and fair with Aung San Suu Kyi and other democracy activists being detained, biased media, and intimidation of politicians, the voting on the day was relatively free and fair. The NLD won a staggering 82% of the seats in Parliament. The dictatorship never recognised the results of the election, and refused to hand over power.

Released For Five Years

Aung San Suu Kyi was held under house arrest until July 1995. When released she faced restrictions on travel.

On March 27 1999, Aung San Suu Kyi’s husband, Michael Aris, died of cancer in London. He had petitioned the Burmese authorities to allow him to visit Aung San Suu Kyi one last time, but they had rejected his request. He had not seen her since a Christmas visit in 1995. The government always urged Aung San Suu Kyi to join her family abroad, but she knew that she would not be allowed to return to Burma.

Detained Again

In 2000 Aung San Suu Kyi was again placed under house arrest after repeated attempts to leave the capital, Rangoon, to hold political meetings in other parts of the country.

Released Again

In 2002, Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest and with freedom to travel around the country. The release was part of a deal negotiated by UN Envoy on Burma, Razali Ismail. He had facilitated secret meetings between Aung San Suu Kyi and the military. Confidence building steps had been agreed, including that the dictatorship would stop the vehement attacks on Aung San Suu Kyi in the media, and the NLD would stop publicly calling for sanctions, although its policy of still supporting targeted economic sanctions remained. However, when it came to move from confidence building meetings, and instead start dealing with matters of substance, the dictatorship refused to engage in any meaningful dialogue. As a low-level envoy without significant political backing from the UN itself or the international community, Razali was unable to persuade the Generals to move the dialogue forward.

After waiting patiently, Aung San Suu Kyi began to travel the country, holding meetings at which tens of thousands of people turned out to see her, dashing the hopes of the Generals that during her long period of detention the people would have forgotten her, and her support would have waned.

The dictatorship began using members of the Union Solidarity and Development Association to harass and attack NLD meetings. This political militia was set up and organised by the military, with Than Shwe, dictator of Burma, as its President. It later transformed as the Union Solidarity and Development Party, the political party front for the military in the elections held on 7th November 2010.

On May 30th 2003 members of the USDA attacked a convoy of vehicles Aung San Suu Kyi was travelling in. It was an attempt by the dictatorship to assassinate Aung San Suu Kyi, using a civilian front so as not to take the blame. Aung San Suu Kyi’s driver managed to drive her to safety, but more than 70 of Aung San Suu Kyi’s supporters were beaten to death. The attack became known at the Depayin Massacre. The dictatorship claimed it was a riot between two political groups, incited by the NLD. The United Nations General Assembly called for the incident to be investigated, but it never was.

Detained Again

Following the attack, Aung San Suu Kyi was held in detention, and then placed back under house arrest.  She has been detained ever since.

During her current period of detention, conditions have been much stricter than in the past. Her phone line has been cut, her post is stopped and National League for Democracy volunteers providing security at her compound were removed in December 2004.

Diplomats are generally not allowed to meet her, although occasionally UN envoys and US government officials have been allowed to meet her. However, even UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon was not allowed to meet her when he visited the country in 2009.

In May 2009, just days before her period of house arrest was due to expire, Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested and charged with breaking the terms of her house arrest, which forbids visitors, after John Yettaw, a United States citizen, swam across Inya lake and refused to leave her house. In August 2009 she was convicted, and sentenced to three years imprisonment. In an apparent attempt to placate international outrage about the trial, the sentence was reduced to 18 months under house arrest.  By coincidence, this meant her release date turned out to be just 6 days after elections held in Burma, thereby ensuring that once again she was in detention during elections. 

International Support

Aung San Suu Kyi has won numerous international awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize, the Sakharov Prize from the European Parliament and the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom. She has called on people around the world to join the struggle for freedom in Burma, saying “Please use your liberty to promote ours.”

Source: Burma Campaign UK: http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/index.php/burma/about-burma/about-burma/a-biography-of-aung-san-suu-kyi

 

Writings and Speeches

Excerpt from famous Freedom from Fear Speech: 1990

“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...

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. Some of its keenest supporters were businessmen who had developed the skills and the contacts necessary not only to survive but to prosper within the system. But their affluence offered them no genuine sense of security or fulfillment, and they could not but see that if they and their fellow citizens, regardless of economic status, were to achieve a worthwhile existence, an accountable administration was at least a necessary if not a sufficient condition. The people of Burma had wearied of a precarious state of passive apprehension where they were 'as water in the cupped hands' of the powers that be...”

Comments at celebration of the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. October 1995

“Today we celebrate, the ‘great soul’ who demonstrated to the world the supremacy of moral force over force based on the might of arms or empire...The life and works of Gandhiji, as I was taught to refer to him even as a child, are both thought provoking and inspiring for those who wish to reach a righteous goal by righteous means.....The way of democracy is to create mutual trust and understanding through free and open discussion and debate. It is by this way that we can learn to settle our differences without resorting to compulsion or violence and to weld unity out of the diversity that is the wonder of our human world. People may be compelled to act against their inclinations, they may be bribed to set aside their conscience. But they cannot be forced to give their hearts and minds to any cause that they do not truly believe to be worthwhile.”

On the Non-Violent Approach

Video tape message sent to a press conference held in UN Human Rights Commission. April, 1996

“There are those who argue that the concept of human rights is not applicable to all cultures. We in the National League for Democracy believe that human rights are of universal relevance. But even those who do not believe in human rights must certainly agree that the rule of law is most important. Without the rule of law there can be no peace, either in a nation, a region, or in throughout the world. In Burma at the moment there is no rule of law. Unless there is the rule of law there can be no peace or justice in this country...”

Aung San Suu Kyi: Liberty

Illustration of Aung San Suu Kyi produced by OBEY

First Broadcast on BBC RADIO 4 at  0900hrs, Tuesday 28, June 2011

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/reithlectures

SUE LAWLEY: Hello and welcome to the Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House, London.  Aung San Suu Kyi personifies the human aspiration for liberty. By dedicating her life to trying to secure freedom for the people of Burma, she’s become a worldwide symbol of hope.  Today, in the first of two lectures - recorded in secret and smuggled out of her country - she explains the nature of that struggle and its importance, not only to Burma, but to the world  as a whole. Welcome then, to the BBC’s Reith Lectures. They’re called “Securing Freedom” and are being given at a time when the human determination to win freedom has never been stronger. Taking heart from the struggles of others, the people of many different countries in the Middle East are seeking to oust the dictatorial regimes that run their lives. At the same time, the fight against the forces of terrorism – which seek to destroy existing liberties – goes on.  In first two Reith Lectures this year, Aung San Suu Kyi will give a first-hand account of the fight against tyranny in a country that’s been run by a military dictatorship for nearly fifty years.  

Aung San Suu Kyi has led the opposition to the Burmese military dictatorship since she returned to her homeland in 1988. Her political party, the National League for Democracy the NLD - won a landslide victory in a general election two years later, but the generals ignored the result.  

Aung San Suu Kyi was put under house arrest, separated from her family in England, not daring to visit her dying husband lest the government prevent her from returning to continue the fight. In 1991 she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. At the end of last year she was released from a third long spell of house arrest. So now let’s listen to the woman revered by many in Burma as ‘The Lady’. Ladies and gentlemen, the BBC’s first Reith Lecturer 2011, Aung San Suu Kyi: 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI

To be speaking to you now, through the BBC, has a very special meaning for me. It means that, once again, I am officially a free person. When I was officially un-free - that is to say when I was under house arrest - it was the BBC that spoke to me. I listened. But that listening also gave me a kind of freedom: the freedom of reaching out to other minds. Of course it was not the same as a personal exchange, but it was a form of human contact. The freedom to make contact with other human beings with whom you may wish to share your thoughts, your hopes, your laughter, and at times even your anger and indignation is a right that should never be violated. Even though I cannot be with you in person today, I am so grateful for this opportunity to exercise my right to human contact by sharing with you my thoughts on what freedom means to me and to others across the world who are still in the sad state of what I would call un-freedom.

The first autobiography I ever read was providentially, or prophetically, or perhaps both, Seven Years Solitary, by a Hungarian woman who had been in the wrong faction during the Communist Party purges of the early 1950s. At 13 years old, I was fascinated by the determination and ingenuity with which one woman alone was able to keep her mind sharp and her spirit unbroken through the years when her  only human contact was with men whose everyday preoccupation was to try to break her. It is one of the most basic needs that those who decide to go into, and to persevere in, the business of dissent have to be prepared to live without. In fact living without is a huge part of the existence of dissidents. 

What kind of people deliberately choose to walk the path of deprivation? Max Weber identifies three qualities of decisive importance for politicians as passion, a sense of responsibility, and a sense of proportion. The first - passion - he interprets as the passionate dedication to a cause. Such a passion is of crucial importance for those who engage in the most dangerous kind of politics: the politics of dissent. Such a passion has to be at the core of each and every person who makes the decision, declared or undeclared, to live in a world apart from the rest of their fellow citizens; a precarious world with its own unwritten rules and regulations. The world of dissidence. 

There are no external signs by which the strange denizens of this world can be recognised. Come any week day to the headquarters of the NLD, a modest place with a ramshackle rough-hewn air of a shelter intended for hardy folk. More than once it has been described as the NLD “cowshed”. Since this remark is usually  made with a sympathetic and often admiring smile, we do not take offence. After all,  didn’t one of the most influential movements in the world begin in a cowshed? 

In our shabby, overcrowded office, you will find very ordinary looking people. That elderly man with poetically unstylish hair is a veteran journalist. He is also a dissident supreme, and when he was released after 20 years in prison immediately set about writing a book about his harrowing experiences entitled Is This A Human Hell? He always wears a prison blue shirt to keep alive the awareness that there are still thousands of prisoners of conscience in Burma. This neat, bespectacled woman with a face free from lines of worry or despair is a doctor who spent 9 years in prison. Since her release 3 years ago, she has been busily involved in the social and humanitarian projects of our party. There are some sweet old ladies in their eighties.

They have been coming regularly to our office since 1997. That was one of our “Tsunami” years when a big wave of repression swept away large members of our democracy activists into jail.  

At one of our party meetings, I called on the wives and small children and old parents of those who had been taken away to rally to our cause to show the Junta that we will not be defeated; that those of us who remained free would  take up the standard of those whose freedom had been curtailed.  The sweet old ladies were among the brave who picked up the standard. They are still holding onto it with great tenacity.

You will also see in our NLD office women and men whom the Burmese would say were of “good age”. That means they’re in their forties. When they joined the Movement for Democracy, they were in their twenties or even still in their late teens, fresh faced and flashing eyed, passionate for the cause. Now they are quieter, more mature, and more determined, their passion refined by the trials they have undergone. You do not ask them if they have ever been to prison. You ask them how many times they have been to jail.

Then there are young people, but not too young to be strangers to interrogation and incarceration. Their faces are bright with hope, but sober, free from the flush of illusion. They know what they have let themselves in for. They threw down the gauntlet to the future with clear eyes. Their weapons are their faith; their armour is their passion - our passion. What is this passion? What is the cause to which we are so passionately dedicated as to forego the comforts of a conventional existence? Going back to Vaclav Havel’s definition of the basic job of dissidents, we are dedicated to the defence of the right of individuals to free and truthful life. In other words, our passion is liberty.  

Passion translates as suffering and I would contend that in the political context, as in the religious one, it implies suffering by choice: a deliberate decision to grasp the cup that we would rather let pass. It is not a decision made lightly - we do not enjoy suffering; we are not masochists. It is because of the high value we put on the object of our passion that we are able, sometimes in spite of ourselves, to choose suffering.

In May 2003 a motorcade of NLD members and supporters accompanying me on a campaign trip to Dabayin, a small town in North Burma, was surrounded and attacked by unknown assailants thought to be operating under the orders of the Junta. Nothing has been heard to this day of the fate of the attackers, but we, their victims, were placed under arrest. I was taken to the notorious Insein jail and kept alone, but, I have to admit, kept rather well in a small bungalow built apart from the quarters of other prisoners. 

One morning, while going through my daily set of physical exercises - keeping fit, as fit as possible was, in my opinion, one of the first duties of a political prisoner - I found myself thinking this is not me. I would not have been capable of carrying on calmly like this. I would have been curled up weakly in my bed, worrying my head out over the fate of those who had been at Dabayin with me. How many of them had been severely beaten up? How many of them had been dragged away to I did not know where? How many of them had died? And what was happening to the rest of the NLD? I would have been laid low by anxiety and uncertainty. This was not me here, working out as conscientiously as any keep fit fanatic.

At that time, I had no recollection of Akhmatova’s  lines: “No, this is not me. This is somebody else that suffers. I could never face that and all that happened.” It was only much later, back in my own house but still under arrest, that these words of requiem came back to me. At the moment of remembrance, I felt almost as a physical force the strong bond that linked those of us who had only our inner resources to fall back on when we were most in need of strength and endurance. 

Poetry is a great unifier that knows no frontiers of space or time. U Win Tin, he of the prison blue shirt, turned to Henley’s Invictus to sustain him through the interrogation sessions he had to undergo. This poem had inspired my father and his contemporaries during the independent struggle, as it also seemed to have inspired freedom fighters in other places at other times. Struggle and suffering, the bloody unbowed head, and even death, all for the sake of freedom. 

What is this freedom that is our passion? Our most  passionate dissidents are not overly concerned with academic theories of freedom.  

If pressed to explain what the word means to them, they would most likely reel off a list of the concerns nearest to their hearts such as there won’t be any more political prisoners, or there will be freedom of speech and information and association, or we can choose the kind of government we want, or simply, and sweepingly, we will be able to do what we want to do.     

This may all sound naïve, perhaps dangerously naïve, but such statements reflect the sense of freedom as something concrete that has to be gained through practical work, not just as a concept to be captured through philosophical argument.  Whenever I was asked at the end of each stretch of house arrest how it felt to be free, I would answer that I felt no different because my mind had always been free. I have spoken out often of the inner freedom that comes out from  following a course in harmony with one’s conscience. Isaiah Berlin warned against the dangers of the internalisation of freedom.  He said: “Spiritual freedom, like moral victory, must be distinguished from a more fundamental sense of freedom and a more ordinary sense of victory. Otherwise there will be a danger of confusion in theory and justification of oppression in practice in the name of liberty itself”. 

There is certainly a danger that the acceptance of  spiritual freedom as a satisfactory substitute for all other freedoms could lead to passivity and resignation. But an inner sense of freedom can reinforce a practical drive for the more fundamental freedoms in the form of human rights and rule of law. Buddhism teaches that the ultimate liberation is liberation  from all desire. It could be argued, therefore, that the teachings of the Buddha are inimical to movements that are based on the desire for freedom in the form of human rights and political reform. However, when the Buddhist monks  of Burma went on a Metta - that is loving kindness - march in 2007, they were protesting against the sudden steep rise in the price of fuel that had led to a devastating rise in food prices. They were using the spiritual authority to move for the basic right of the people to affordable food.  

The belief in spiritual freedom does not have to mean an indifference to the practical need for the basic rights and freedoms that are generally seen as necessary that human beings may live like human beings.

A basic human right, which I value highly, is freedom from fear. Since the very beginning of the democracy movement in Burma, we have had to contend with the debilitating sense of fear that permeates our whole society. 

Visitors to Burma are quick to remark that the Burmese are warm and hospitable. They also add, sadly, that the Burmese are in general afraid to discuss political issues. 

Fear is the first adversary we have to get past when we set out to battle for freedom, and often it is the one that remains until the very end. But freedom from fear does not have to be complete. It only has to be sufficient to enable us to carry on; and to carry on in spite of fear requires tremendous courage.   

“No, I am not afraid. After a year of breathing these prison nights, I will escape into the sadness to name which is escape. It isn’t true. I am afraid, my darling, but make it look as though you haven’t noticed.” 

The gallantry embodied in Ratushinskaya lines is everyday fare for dissidents. They pretend to be unafraid as they go about their duties and pretend not to see that their comrades are also pretending. This is not hypocrisy. This is courage that has to be renewed consciously from day to day and moment to moment. This is how the battle for freedom has to be fought until such time as we have the right to be free from the fear imposed by brutality and injustice. 

Akhmatova and Ratushinskaya were Russians. Henley was English. But the struggle to survive under oppression and the passion to be the  master of one’s own fate and the captain of one’s own soul is common to all races. The universal human aspiration to be free has been  brought home to us by the stirring developments in the Middle East.  

The Burmese are as excited by these events as peoples elsewhere. Our interest is particularly keen because there are notable similarities between the December 2010 revolution in Tunisia and our own 1988 uprising. Both started with what at that time seemed small, unimportant events. 

A fruit-seller in a Tunisian town, unknown to the world at large, gave an unforgettable demonstration of the importance of basic human rights. One humble man showed the world that his right to human dignity was more precious to him than life itself. This sparked off a whole revolution. In Burma, a quarrel in a Rangoon teashop between university students and local men was handled by the police in a way the students considered unjust. This led to demonstrations that resulted in the death of a student, Phone Maw. This was the spark that fired the nationwide demonstrations against the dictatorship of the Burmese  Socialist Programme Party.

French cultural personalities attend a silent gathering to support Myanmar detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi Photo: AFP/GETTY

A friend once said she thought the straw that broke the camel’s back became intolerable because the animal had caught a glimpse of itself in a mirror. The realization dawned that the burden it was bearing was of unacceptable magnitude and its collapse was in fact a refusal to continue bearing so oppressive a load.

In Tunis and in Burma, the deaths of two young men were the mirrors that made the people see how unbearable were the burdens of injustice and oppression they had to endure. It is natural that the young should yearn for freedom. The desire to stretch newly matured wings is as strong as it is instinctive. It comes as no surprise to us in Burma that young people are at the vanguard of the Tunisian Revolution. It also comes as no surprise that a popular rapper was prominent among those who demanded that  they be allowed to decide the shape of their own existence. 

In Burma today, young rappers are at the core of Generation Wave, an informal organisation strongly committed to democracy and human rights. A number of them were imprisoned after the Saffron Revolution of the monks. About 15 of them still remain in jail today. The Burmese authorities, like the now ousted Tunisian government, are not fond of intense, unconventional young people.

They see them as a threat to the kind of order they wish to impose on our country. For those who believe in freedom, young rappers represent a future unbound by prejudice, by arbitrary rules and regulations, by oppression and injustice.  

The similarities between Tunisia and Burma are the similarities that bind people all over the world who long for freedom. There are dissimilarities too and it is because of these dissimilarities that the outcome of the two revolutions has been so different. The first dissimilarity is that while the Tunisian Army did not fire on their people, the Burmese Army did. The second, and in the long-run probably the more important one, is that the Tunisian Revolution enjoyed the benefits of the communications revolution.  

This not only enabled them to better organise and coordinate their movements. It kept the attention of the whole world firmly focused on them. Not just every single death - but even every single wounded - can be made known to the world within minutes. In Libya, in Syria, and in Yemen now, the revolutionaries keep the world informed of the atrocities of those in power. The picture of a 13 year old boy tortured to death in Syria aroused such anger and indignation that world leaders had to raise their voices in condemnation. Communications means contact and, in the context of the Middle Eastern revolutions, it was a freedom contact.  

Do we envy the people of Tunisia and Egypt? Yes, we do envy them their quick and peaceful transitions. But more than envy is a sense of solidarity and of renewed commitment to our cause, which is the cause of all women and men who value human dignity and freedom. In our quest for freedom, we learn to be free. We have to act out our belief in freedom. This is Vaclav Havel’s Living in Truth. We go about our duties out of our own free will, in spite of the dangers that are inherent in trying to live like free people in an un-free nation. We exercise our freedom of choice by choosing to do what we consider to be right, even if that choice leads to the curtailment of other freedoms because we believe that freedom engenders more freedoms.  Those old women and those young people who come to  their unpaid jobs at NLD headquarters are exercising their right to choose the hard road to freedom.  

As I speak to you, I am exercising my right to the freedom of communications; and the very fact that I am exercising this right makes me feel a much freer person.  Dissent is a vocation in accordance with Max Weber’s views on politics as a vocation. We engage in dissent for the sake of liberty and we are prepared to try again and again with passion, with a sense of responsibility and a sense of proportion to achieve what may seem impossible to some. We are struggling with open eyes to turn our dream of freedom into a reality.

I would like to end this lecture with my favourite lines from Kipling with many thanks to Tim Garton-Ash who tracked them down for me.  “I’d not give room for an Emperor - I’d hold my road for a King. To the Triple Crown I’d not bow down - but this is a different thing! I’ll not fight with the Powers of Air - sentry, pass him through! Drawbridge let fall - He’s the lord of us all - the Dreamer whose dream came true!”

Audience applause 

SUE LAWLEY : Aung San Suu Kyi recorded that lecture in the recent past, but we now have a live sound link to her in Rangoon. Aung San Suu Kyi, welcome. Did you hear the applause for your lecture?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Yes, thank you.

SUE LAWLEY: And I hope you’re now happy to take questions from our audience here? 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Yes I’d be happy with nice questions!   

SUE LAWLEY: (laughs) Well with me I have Tim Garton Ash whom you mentioned just now, a historian and political commentator. He’s written widely, as you know, about dictatorship and dissent from Eastern Europe under Communism to Burma today. And I have Sir Kieran Prendergast, a British diplomat who was Under Secretary General for Political Affairs at the United Nations and now advises the Geneva based Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. And we’ve got a wide and distinguished audience with politicians and dissidents and commentators from China, Egypt, Iran, Syria, as well as Burma, and we’ll be taking questions from them. Let me begin though by asking Timothy Garton Ash to put his question to Aung San Suu Kyi.

TIMOTHY GARTON ASH: Well, Suu, first of all thank you so much for a really wonderful, very moving lecture. I’m not sure if this is a nice question, but I wanted to push you a bit on the contrast you made with Tunisia, and I wanted to ask you why is it, do you think, that your struggle has taken so long - after all nearly a quarter century now, since 1988. Is it because the Burmese Army is prepared to shoot to kill? Is it because a non-violent struggle necessarily takes a long time? Is it because the communications revolution has not yet reached Burma as much as it has the Maghreb? Or is it perhaps the geopolitical situation where Tunisia has a free Europe as its neighbour, you have China? What is the mix of reasons, do you think, which means that your own struggle has been so long and so hard?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: I think it’s all of those. But to begin with, it’s because our army shot on the people and when an army does that it really puts a stop to future movement for some time. I think it’s not just in Burma; that you will find that in other countries as well. Even in Eastern Europe after the Hungarian Revolution was put down, people were more wary about taking to the streets. And then I think the communications revolution made a lot of difference. Now you can see what is going on everywhere in the Middle East, but what happened in Burma in 1988 was much worse. But people don’t know that. And then of course there arealso geopolitical considerations.  But I think the shooting and the lack of images to rouse the whole world have a lot to do with the way in which our revolution has been going on for such a long time. Not just because we want it to be peaceful - because after all in Tunisia and Egypt it has been peaceful.

SUE LAWLEY: Nevertheless, Aung San Suu Kyi, Nelson Mandela himself changed, didn’t he? He said that non-violence as a tactic should be abandoned when it no longer worked. Is that something you might be tempted by?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: It’s possible because I have said in the lectures that I do not hold to non-violence for moral reasons, but for practical and political reasons, because I think it’s best for the country. And even Ghandiji, who is supposed to be the father of non-violence, said that between cowardice and violence, he’d choose violence any time. 

SUE LAWLEY: We have with us in fact a young woman, a refugee from Burma, Wai Hnin Pwint Thon. She’s a student now in London, but her  father is a political prisoner still in Burma. Let me invite her to put a question to you.

WAI HNIN PWINT THON: Yes, Mingalaba Ahmay [translation: Well wishes to you, Mother]. I would like to ask as a young person from Burma, we  all want to get involved in the movement. I would like to know what is the best practical action as young people to do to improve the change in Burma, to get the change in Burma.

SUE LAWLEY: Do you mean action taken here, outside Burma …

WAI HNIN PWINT THON: (over) Yes. 

SUE LAWLEY: … or in Burma by students?

WAI HNIN PWINT THON: Inside or outside for all young people to do. What can we do as a best practical action?

SUE LAWLEY: Daw Suu?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: I don’t think there is one best practical action. But for young people outside Burma, it’s most important that they keep up an awareness of what’s happening in Burma. That’s what they can do best. But for the young people in Burma, they have so many things to do. We have to work in all directions at  the same time. I think the young people inside Burma really have a tough time fighting for  freedom. They have to learn to educate themselves practically as well as theoretically, and they have to learn to educate other people as well - to bring them along in their struggle.

SUE LAWLEY:  Let me bring in Sir Kieran Prendergast here. What do you feel about the approach of the National League for Democracy, Sir Kieran? Do you feel that the nature of its approach - which has been very consistent now,  hasn’t it, since 1990 - do you think it should be changed in any way?

SIR KIERAN PRENDERGAST: Well I do ask myself sometimes whether the policy hasn’t got frozen a bit, stuck in a little bit of a rut, particularly in terms of advice to the outside world in terms of our engagement. Really there are only four broad policy instruments open to us. One is to engage. The second is to isolate - but, as far as I can see, Burma has isolated herself very willingly since 1962. The third is to sanction, but the difficulty there is that China is moving in, in a bold and aggressive way to invest in Burma. And the fourth is to attack. And I honestly think that after the various follies of recent Western policy and the hubris of thinking that we can do so much by military means that is not going to happen.  So what I was wondering was whether there was scope for the NLD to have a look at those two remaining areas: namely engagement and also sanctions - whether a blanket ban doesn’t just serve the interests of a country like China, which is not going to bring freedom or democracy. Whether, for example, the NLD could lay down criteria for foreign investment, which would … because, after all, you know if you think about countries like Vietnam, about Indonesia, which have been very closed societies for many years or military dominated, it was really the prosperity and the Western investment that forced the military to see that they couldn’t continue running and that they had to open up society.

SUE LAWLEY: Daw Suu, you’re under attack there, not a nice question. You’re frozen and stuck in a rut.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Well though it’s not such a bad question because it gives me a chance to answer. First of all, I don’t think these four ways that you mentioned are ways as such. We have always been in favour of engagement and we’ve always been in favour of critical engagement because I don’t think you’ll get anywhere without engaging. We don’t believe in isolation. And with regard to sanctions, I don’t think there are blanket sanctions in Burma.

Only Canada has imposed blanket sanctions. Certainly the EU hasn’t and not even the United States. So I don’t think you can say that they are blanket sanctions and there are many more things that you can do on the sanctions front if you really wish to. Now with regard to whether or not sanctions are effective, I would like to remind you that one of the very first motions tabled in this new National Assembly was a motion asking for the removal of sanctions by the USDP.  Now if sanctions are not effective, why are they so keen on having them removed? I think this is something that you should think about. And with regard to critical engagement, it could be carried  on in such a way as to help us in our network for democracy - which has been working well, much better than I had expected - since my release last November. And by empowering the people and decreasing their dependency on the government, you could help the movement for democracy in a new and more vigorous way.    

SUE LAWLEY:  I’m going to call in Vicky Bowman who’s a former British Ambassador to Burma. And she was there as a diplomat in the 90s, but she’s married I think to a Burmese dissident who was a political prisoner there for many years. Vicky Bowman?

VICKY BOWMAN: My question is about dissent within opposition movements because one sees that many opposition movements in authoritarian states have difficulty dealing with internal dissent, and the Burmese opposition movement I think has suffered similar problems, so it’s such that it’s tended to be you personally rather than a strong organisational structural or policy programme which has united and reunified the movement when it’s fragmented. So my question is what can opposition movements in authoritarian regimes do to deal effectively with a broad church of views within their, so that they can survive and thrive independently of a single individual and thus be less vulnerable as your party has been vulnerable to you having been locked up for so many years in the last twenty years? Thank you.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: I think a lot of people forget how very young the NLD is. For example, if we think about the ANC or the Indian National Congress during the Indian struggle for independence, they were old established parties which had had a long time in which to work out their difficulties.  

I think dissent within dissenters is very normal and natural because life is difficult, we have to struggle; and when we have to struggle and life is difficult, people start disagreeing with each other as to the way out of the problems. And to depend on one or a few leaders is not so unusual either. This tends to happen in young movements. And although we have been going on for more than 20 years, in comparison with many movements like ours, we are still a young movement and we’re learning all the time. We’re still in the first generation in a way. When we get to the second generation, we’ll be much better. But I hope that we’ll get to democracy before we get to the second generation.

SUE LAWLEY: (laughs) But do you feel, Daw Suu, that you’re in a stronger position now than  you were 22 years ago? I mean when the results of the general election were announced by the regime back in November and then you were released, I mean weren’t those signs that they felt stronger than ever?

AUNG SAN SUU KY: No, I feel stronger now; we feel stronger now. I don’t know whether they feel stronger or not, but we certainly feel stronger because of this infusion of new blood. I have never seen so many young people supporting the NLD. They are not necessarily members of the NLD, which is what I really like. They’re not members of the NLD, but they support our movement very enthusiastically and they are in many ways better qualified than the young people of the 1988 generation because they have had better access to modern education and it’s all part of the communications revolution too. So we certainly feel in a stronger position in spite of the fact that we’re supposed to be an unregistered party. 

SUE LAWLEY: I’m going to call in Heba Morayef who’s an Egyptian who works for a human rights group and was in Tahrir Square during the spontaneous uprising there in January. Heba, your question?

HEBA MORAYEF: I wanted to ask you what you think the obligations  of the international community are when local dissidents are being cracked down upon because one of the things we struggled against in Egypt for years was  the fact that the Mubarak government was given unconditional support by the United States and the EU.  

But also what the limitations of that international support should be because if you look across the rest of the Middle East intervention in  Libya complicates things for local dissidents and threatens in a sense to de-legitimise their struggle at a certain point, while other countries such as Bahrain are untouched by international criticism and can continue to crack down. So how to get that balance right in  terms of what we ask for as local dissidents?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI:  First of all I think we have to accept the sad fact that people are attracted by power. I have found that perfectly decent [people] are flattered when the ruling governments bathe them some attention, makes a fuss over them, and this is true for Burmese people as well as for non-Burmese people who come to Burma. And this attraction that power and influence has over humanity in general works against those who are in the dissenting faction because we are who are dissidents, we don’t have the power, and people tend to think that those who are in power must be in power for good reasons when actually there can be very, very horrible reasons for people being in power. So I think what we have to do is to raise people’s awareness as to where it leads to in the long run - if you support those who should not be supported - and I think Egypt is now in a very good position to do that.

SUE LAWLEY: How disappointed are you in the responses of the international community? Do you feel, Daw Suu, that they could and should be doing more?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: I won’t say disappointed is the word because some have been very supportive. For example, the United States has certainly been very supportive. We can’t deny that. The EU has been supportive - some countries more than others, but certainly supportive. And even among the Asian countries - this is something I’ve discovered since my latest release - is that they are beginning to be more aware of the need to support the movement for democracy in Burma. You find …

SUE LAWLEY:  (speaks over) But China, India, Singapore you know are big trading partners with the regime, aren’t they? 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Yes - trading partners, yes. But alright, China and India, let’s leave them aside for the time being because they certainly have a lot more to do with the government than we would wish them to, quite frankly. But Singapore is part of ASEAN (The Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and in general, although I don’t want to name the nations individually, the ASEAN nations have been so much more supportive since my release than they ever were before I was put away under house arrest in 2003. 

SUE LAWLEY: A quick comment from Timothy Garton Ash.

TIMOTHY GARTON ASH:  Daw Suu, can I push you on that because, after all, India, your immediate neighbour, is the world’s largest democracy. Don’t you think the country of Gandhi should be doing more to support a strictly non-violent movement for human freedom?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI:  Oh certainly, I think so, and I say that ad nauseum. I say that they should be firmly rooted in the democratic principles instead of putting trade and strategic interests at the forefront.

SUE LAWLEY:  Sir Kieran Prendergast, what about the UN? The UN has not been at all effective really, has it, in helping the people of Burma?

SIR KIERAN PRENDERGAST: The trouble is that policy on issues of peace and security are made by the Security Council and in the Security Council Russia and China have a veto, and I think that it’s not actually realistic to expect, for example, India to take a policy which ignores its own strategic interests. It’s not going to cede the field to China. Now China has not been completely immobile. When I joined the UN in 1997, there would have been no question of Burma being discussed in the Security Council. They simply would have said this is an internal matter, we can’t discuss it. Whereas in fact in recent years Burma has come under discussion in the Security Council. It’s inching forward, but there are going to be very serious limits to how far that goes. 

SUE LAWLEY: You’ve suggested before now that China is a little embarrassed about its trade with Burma.

SIR KIERAN PRENDERGAST: I think they’re a bit embarrassed by the behaviour of the regime when it uses violence, but you know interest trumps embarrassment.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI:  Could I put in a remark about China and the UN? China is very concerned now about the hostilities which have broken out in the North between the KIA and the Burmese Army. Now one of the things that China keeps repeating is that the military regime is necessary for stability in Burma. I think they are beginning to see that stability is not achieved through repression, certainly not by the kind of military repression that is going on. And then with regard to the UN, there are other things I think that the UN can do besides what is done within the Security Council. For example, one of the previous Secretary Generals, Perez de Cuellar, did everything possible to put Burma on the United Nations map. In that way, I think the Secretary General and the United Nations Secretariat can do more to help Burma if they should wish to.

SUE LAWLEY: So that’s your message? This is one of our questions from the audience that’s just been handed to me: what is your message for the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon? It is do more, please, and now?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI:  Yes, whatever the Secretary General and the United  Nations Secretariat are capable of doing should be done as quickly as possible.

SUE LAWLEY: Brief comment, please.

SIR KIERAN PRENDERGAST: Well we’ve had for a long time a personal representative of the Secretary General who visits Burma from time to time. I have to say I found it a very frustrating experience when I was at the UN because in order to try and open up a more productive debate, we wanted, for example, to be able to take with us someone from the World Bank to hold up some of the benefits that might come to Burma if they were to open up their political system. And we were unable to do that because the Americans’ administration told us that if we did, they might lose - as a result of congressional pressure - they might lose funding for the World Bank. So whoever goes has to have some instruments that he or she can deploy.

SUE LAWLEY: I’m going to call in Geoffrey Alan. Geoffrey Alan, where are you? 

GEOFFREY ALAN: I’m going to bring it back to the communications revolution. Daw Suu, it’s an honour to speak to you. I’m really interested in what you were talking about - the difference between the movements for democracy in Burma and what we’re seeing in the Middle East. How are you planning to use the communications revolution in Burma? Are you tweeting? Are people finding ways to get information out of Burma that we can be following and re-tweeting here?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: (over) Well I’m using it right now talking to you. I couldn’t have done that seven years ago. (Sue Lawley tries to interject) They just cut off my telephone line and that was it. I was isolated from the rest of the world. 

SUE LAWLEY: But what about the young people of Burma? Are they able to communicate in the way that the young people of the Middle East are - mobile phones, Twitter and so on? Is that happening?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI:  Not to that extent. Not to that extent because there are far fewer mobile phones and computers here in Burma than in the Middle East. But one of the first differences I noticed on the day I was released were all those hand phones in the hands of the young people who came to greet me at my gate. I had never seen a hand phone before except in the hands of my security officer - that is to say the people in charge of my security.

SUE LAWLEY: But you know back in 2007 when the monks rose up, the Saffron Revolution, we did see pictures of that on mobile phones, you know, and yet it didn’t become the trigger that it has in the Middle East when we’ve seen pictures from Tahrir Square. Why do you think that is? Is there simply perhaps not enough of it? 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Well I was told there was not enough of it - I don’t know because I was under house arrest then and of course I saw none of these pictures. I only heard the news on the radio. And the radio news are very important, but certainly it doesn’t have the same sort of impact as visual images.

SUE LAWLEY: I’m going to call in Cara Bleiman.  A question on tourism, I think. 

CARA BLEIMAN: Oh hello, it’s an honour to speak to you. So those of us who can use our freedom to visit Burma as tourists.

SUE LAWLEY: Should we use our freedom to visit Burma as tourists, Daw Suu?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Oh. We would like tourists to avoid the facilities  that are owned not just by the government but by the cronies, and also to encourage those institutions which have outreach programmes to help the people of Burma and to help in the conservation of the environment. And we hope soon to bring out a list of the actual travel agencies and hotels which are engaging in such positive programmes.

SUE LAWLEY: But you’re saying that you would prefer it if people avoided the big cruises or the big hotels in the centre of Rangoon? The money goes into the pockets of the cronies if you go on those, yes?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: We can’t say that all the big hotels are owned by cronies, but I would say that the great majority of them are and we are  trying to work on a list so that the tourists will have a clearer idea of which hotels and which facilities they should encourage and which they should not encourage.

SUE LAWLEY: Let me call Rouhi Shafii from Iran. 

ROUHI SHAFII: Yes, my question is I was recently at the UN Human Rights Council sessions in 
Geneva and there was a lady from your country, a member of an NGO, and she was saying that it was best if you participated in the elections in Burma instead of refusing it. I just 
wanted to know the reason why you didn’t participate in the elections. Thank you.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: There are three main reasons why we didn’t participate in the elections. The first was that if you were to contest the elections, you have to sign an undertaking to protect the 2008 constitution. Now this constitution give the army a right to take over all powers of government whenever they feel it’s necessary. Now, secondly, we couldn’t accept the condition that we would have to expel all members of our party who were in prison. That is to say we must abandon our prisoners of conscience if we wanted to contest the elections. And, thirdly, we would have  to wipe the 1990 elections off the political map of Burma. That also we were unprepared to do. I don’t know why that lady said we should have contested the elections, but for us it was not possible under those conditions.

SUE LAWLEY: And finally a question from Maureen Lipman, the actress who’s a long time campaigner for democracy and human rights in Burma. Maureen?

MAUREEN LIPMAN:  Daw Suu Kyi, it’s a great honour for me to be your  showbiz representative here. During your years under house arrest and in captivity, was it comedy or tragedy which lifted your spirits?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: It was certainly comedy. I’ve always liked comedy. Perhaps I have been influenced by my mother who used to tell me that … about sad films. She said she never wanted to watch sad films because there had been too much sadness in her personal life.  And perhaps because of that, I’ve never liked sad films. I’ve never been fond of tragedy - 
though mind you, I like some of Shakespeare’s tragedies. So comedy any time.

MAUREEN LIPMAN:  I think it would be wonderful … I’m not allowed to  ask a second question, but if you … because it’s so hard to get the profile of Burma out into the world, to make people care as much as they care about other things like the Middle East, it would be wonderful if you could just say a word about what the education system is in Burma now, how difficult it is for people to have an education.

SUE LAWLEY: Daw Suu?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI:  I think people have to learn to educate themselves  and that’s too tough. You can’t expect children to educate themselves. You have to wait until you’re grown-up before you know that you can educate yourself. So I think we need to start fromthe very, very beginning and we need help from every possible source. And I might as well say that NLD and the Democracy Network have started a series of free schools, which are very successful and very much in need of all kinds of help.

SUE LAWLEY:  Daw Suu, as you said in your lecture yours is a very serious business. You talked about the dangers of the politics of dissent and you dice with danger every day in the course of your struggle. I know before now you’ve actually faced a line of soldiers with their rifles point at you and their commander counting down to fire. Have you - and it’s probably obvious that you have - come to terms with the fact that ultimately you might, like your father before you, have to give your life for your cause and your country?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Yes, I think we all come to terms with such a possibility very early on.

SUE LAWLEY: And nothing changes? You know that that’s always a possibility?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: That’s always a possibility. But, on the other hand, there’s always the possibility that you might be knocked down by a bus on the high street. (laughter)

SUE LAWLEY: Kieran Prendergast, what do you feel about the future if you can possibly look into it for Burma? It’s incredibly difficult and it is … it is always the elephant in the room really, isn’t it? What chances do you think there are of democracy eventually coming to Burma?

SIR KIERAN PRENDERGAST: My gut feeling is that it’s one of the most difficult of all of the 
countries to deal with. Because of this long tradition of isolation, self-isolation and I suspect 
that change will come much more from within than from without.  

SUE LAWLEY: Daw Suu, do you believe it possible that you might one day lead a democratic Burma?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Oh very possible. I would like just to remind Tim that he wrote in one of the books published in the late 1980s that change was not going to come to East Germany for a long, long time …(laughter)

TIMOTHY GARTON ASH: Oh hang on, hang on.

AUNG SAN SUU KYI:  (laughing)… and everything happened in 1989.  (Timothy Garton Ash laughs) And I think if you had asked anybody last year what they thought of the possibility of Tunisia and Egypt changing overnight, I think very  few people would have said oh it was going to change. They would probably have said oh well, you know what  are you talking 
about?

SUE LAWLEY: Timothy Garton Ash, you can put this in context for us. You studied dissent in Eastern Europe. Where do people find … I know Daw Suu is so modest that you know we can’t tell her she’s a courageous person, but where do people find the courage to face these kinds of things some inner steel that means they are prepared not just to give up their liberty but possibly their lives in the interests of their cause?

TIMOTHY GARTON ASH:  Well I certainly feel able to tell Aung San Suu Kyi that she’s a heroine. You know what, I’ve spent 40 years thinking about this question and actually it’s much easier to work out why people become collaborators, servants of a dictatorship. The ingredients of cowardice are much easier to identify than the ingredients of courage, which are often mysterious. But if I may on that note, could I just put a quick question to Daw Suu because one of the most fantastic sentences in your lecture, Suu, is when you say of people in the opposition, I quote:  “They pretend to be unafraid as they go about their duties and pretend not to see that their comrades are also pretending.”

And that’s a wonderful insight into what drives an  opposition. Do you feel coming out of house arrest that the barriers of fear are higher or are lower? Which direction? Do you think the barrier of fear is close to being overcome in the wider society?

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Yes, I think the barriers are lower. And could I just say that I think one of the reasons why we go on is because we just don’t know how to stop.  (laughter) We don’t know how to turn our backs on our beliefs. We don’t know how to abandon our comrades, our colleagues. We just don’t know how to do these things, so we go on.

SUE LAWLEY:  There we have to end it, I’m afraid. Next week our  lecturer develops her theme as she discusses the forces at work against her political party, The National League for Democracy, and what Vaclav Havel has termed “the power of the powerless”. Our thanks to our audience here in the Radio Theatre in London and an incredibly special thanks to our Reith Lecturer in Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Aung San Suu Kyi: Dissent

A Myanmar activist holds a portrait of Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi during a protest at the Chinese embassy in Bangkok  Photo: AFP

Reith Lectures 2011: Securing Freedom

This second lecture by Aung San Suu Kyi for the Reith Lectures was delivered on 5th of July, 2011
http://www.bbc.co.uk/reithlectures

SUE LAWLEY:  Hello and welcome to the Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House, London. For the past 23 years, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese pro-democracy leader, has been fighting for freedom against the military dictatorship that rules her country. Today she is giving the second of her two BBC Reith Lectures entitled “Securing Freedom”, which have been recorded in secret at her home in Burma.  In her first lecture, Aung San Suu Kyi discussed what she called the “un-freedom” in which the people of Burma live, and described the passion with which she and her supporters, like those who’ve recently taken to the streets in the Middle East, seek the right to liberty and democracy. 

In this second lecture, Aung San Suu Kyi describes  how her party - the National League for Democracy, The NLD - has survived, despite being officially ignored by the regime since it won a landslide election victory in 1990. She draws parallels with dissidents throughout the world for whom, like her, struggle has been their life’s work. Ladies and gentlemen, the BBC’s first Reith Lecturer of 2011: Aung San Suu Kyi.  

AUNG SAN SUU KYI:  When I agreed, with great trepidation, to take on the Reith Lectures, it was based on the simple desire to discover what we are. By “we”, I mean the National League for Democracy, the NLD, as well as other groups and individuals who are engaged in the campaign for democracy in Burma.  

We have been engaged in the struggle for democracy  for more than 20 years, so, you might think, we should know what we are. Well yes, we do know what we are, but only up to a certain point. It is easy enough to say that we are members of a particular party like the NLD or organisation, but beyond that things start to get a bit fuzzy.  I was made acutely aware of this when I was released from my third stretch of house arrest last November. Perhaps I should explain. A lot happened while I was under house arrest, cut off from the world outside. Two of the most notable events - I was tempted to say mishaps - that happened in Burma were the referendum in 2008, followed by the general election last November. The referendum was supposed to show - or at least the Burmese military junta hoped it would show - that more than 90 per cent of voters were in favour of a new constitution; a constitution which would give the military the right to take over all powers of government whenever it was thought necessary for the good of the nation. The first general elections in nearly 20 years were meant to follow according to what the generals rather absurdly called their “road map to disciplined democracy”.  

This is when it starts to get complicated. To take part in these elections, new political parties had to register with the Elections Commission along with all those parties which had previously registered back in 1988. They also had to undertake to protect and defend the constitution, drawn up two years earlier, and to expel any of their members who were in prison, including those who were appealing against their sentences. This included me as I would have to be expelled if the NLD wanted to register. Instead it chose to carry on its right to remain as a political party in the law courts, although we were fully aware of the lack of an independent judiciary in Burma.  

So when I was released from house arrest last year, only days after the elections, I was faced with a barrage of questions. Two of the most frequent ones were, first, whether or not the National League for Democracy had become an unlawful organisation.  

The second was how I saw the role of the party now  that there was an official opposition which didn’t include us. It was instead  the handful of parties whose representatives now occupy less than 15 per cent of the seats in the Burmese National Assembly.  

The first question was easy enough to answer: we were not an unlawful organisation because we had not infringed any of the terms of the unlawful organisations law. The second, regarding the role of the party, was more difficult because the NLD’s position has been ambiguous ever since the elections held in 1990 when we won more than four-fifths of the vote and shocked what  was then known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council, the official name of the Burmese military regime. 

The years of military rule have produced a very rich collection of Orwellian terms.  There are countries where elections have been rigged or hijacked or where the results have been disputed or denied, but Burma is  surely the only one where the results have been officially acknowledged in the state gazette, followed by nothing.

Aung San Suu Kyi is Burma's opposition heroine, seen here aged two, with her parents and two elder brothers in 1947.

Nothing was done to provide a real role for the winning party or elected representatives in spite of earlier promises by leaders of the Junta that the responsibility of the government would be handed over to the winners once the elections were over and the army would go back quietly to their barracks.  The most notable outcome of the elections in 1990 was the systematic repression of all parties and organisations, formal or informal, as well as individuals who persisted in demanding that the desire of the people of Burma for democratic governance be fulfilled.  

We may have won, but the election in 1990 heralded the beginning of lean years for the NLD. The party made determined efforts to keep itself alive - alive but certainly not kicking. To casual observers, it began to look moribund. Only the year before the Chairman of the party, U Tin Oo, and other key members of the Movement for Democracy were imprisoned and I had been placed under house arrest.  

When U Tin Oo and I were released 6 years later, we found that many of our most effective activists were still in prison, had gone into exile or had died - some of them while they were in custody. Others were in poor health as a result of harsh years spent in jails that did not even provide the bare minimum of medical care. Most of our offices had been forced to shut down. Our activities were severely curtailed by a slew of rules and regulations, and our every move watched closely by the ubiquitous military intelligence. 

The M.I. or MI - as some refer to it with lugubrious familiarity - could drag any of us away at any time - they preferred the dead of night - on any charge that took their fancy. Yet in the midst of such unrelenting persecution, we had still remained an official political party, unlike today, and we began to be referred to as “the opposition”. So here we were in opposition, but not the official opposition. Should we accept that we were the opposition, after all, because we were in opposition to the government, whether or not that government is legitimate?  

In 1997, the State Law and Order Restoration Council was renamed the State Peace and Development Council. Was it because astrologers had advised that such a move was necessary to ward off the possibility of regime change, or because the Junta was getting tired of jokes made at the expense of the acronym SLORC, which smacked uncomfortably of such artificial organisations as SMASH? We shall never know. The official explanation was that the new name indicated it was time for the Junta to move on to bigger and better things, as they had succeeded in their declared intention of establishing law and order. Considering that the Burmese expression for law and order translates literally as quiescent, cowering, crushed and flattened, perhaps we’re not far from the truth. 

The regime’s version of law and order was a state of affairs to which we were thoroughly opposed: a nation of quiescent, cowering, crushed and flattened citizens was the very antithesis of what we were trying to achieve. The shape of the NLD began to take on a sharper contour as we faced up to the challenges of the struggle to survive as a political entity under military dictatorship.

We sought ideas and inspirations in our own culture and history, in the struggles for revolutionary change in other countries, in the thoughts of philosophers and the opinions of observers and academics, in the words of our critics, in the advice of our supporters and friends. We had to find ways and means of operating as effectively as possible within the parameters imposed on us by the Junta while striving at the same time to extend the frontiers of possibility. Certainly we could not carry out the functions that would normally be expected of an opposition party.  

As repression intensified, those of us in the National League for Democracy felt our essential nature to be more and more distant from that of a conventional opposition. We were recognised as the political party with the strongest support, both at home and abroad, and we carried the burden of responsibility that goes with such recognition. But we had none of the privileges that would have been accorded to such a party in a working democracy and barely any of the basic rights of a legitimate political organisation. We were at once much more and much less than an opposition.  

In one of the first public speeches I made in 1988, I suggested that we were launching out on our second struggle for independence. The first, in the middle of the last century, had brought us freedom from colonial rule. The second, we hope, would bring us freedom from military dictatorship. 

The prominent role students played when they rose up in the demonstrations of 1988 evoked images of the students who had swept the country along with them in their demonstrations for independence in the 1930s. Some of these students of a past era had become prominent national figures and served as members of the postindependence government or as party leaders until they were forcefully removed from the political arena after the military coup of 1962. Many of these veteran independence fighters were quick to join the movement for democracy and thus linked the new struggle to the old one.  

Yet there were many differences between the two, of which the most obvious was that while our parents had fought against a foreign power, we were engaged in combat with antagonists who were of the same nation, the same race, the same colour, the same religion. Another difference, pivotal though seldom recognised as such, was that while the colonial government was authoritarian, it was significantly less totalitarian than the Junta that came into power in 1988. 

A well-known writer who had plunged into the Independence Movement as a young student, and who had engaged in clandestine work for the resistance during the Japanese occupation, told me in 1989 that she thought the challenges we had to face were far tougher than the ones with which she and her contemporaries had had to contend. Before and after the Second World War rule of law protected the independence movement from extreme measures by the British administration. 

When war and the Japanese Army came to the country, the presence of the newly created Burmese Army, commanded by my father, acted as a buffer between the resistance and the worst elements of the occupation forces. We could draw inspiration from the triumph of our forebears, but we could not confine ourselves to our own history in the quest for ideas and tactics  that could aid our own struggle. 

We had to go beyond our own colonial experience. The regime meanwhile preferred to remain shackled to the past, blaming colonialism for all the ills of the nation and branding the NLD and its supporters new colonialists. 

Scanning the world for ideas and inspiration, it was natural that we should have turned to our close neighbour India. We sifted through the tactics and strategies of the Indian Independence Movement and the thoughts and philosophies of its leaders, looking for what might be relevant or useful.  Gandhi’s teachings on non-violent civil resistance and the way in which he had put his theories into practice have become part of the  working manual of those who would change authoritarian administrations through peaceful means. I was attracted  to the way of non-violence, but not on moral grounds, as some believe. Only on practical political grounds. 

Myanmar, Rangoon, 1995.  Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, nonviolent activist and winner of the 1991 Peace Prize, reads in her yard where she was under house arrest for 6 years. © Steve Curry/Magnum Photos 

This is not quite the same as the ambiguous or pragmatic or mixed approaches to non-violence that have been attributed to Gandhi’s  satyagraha or Martin Luther King’s civil rights. It is simply based on my conviction that we need to put an end to the tradition of regime change through violence, a tradition which has become the running sore of Burmese politics. 

When the military crushed the uprisings of 1988 by  shooting down unarmed demonstrators with a brutal lack of discrimination or restraint, hundreds of students and other activists fled across the border to Thailand. Many of them were convinced that those who lived by the gun could only be defeated by the gun, and decided to form student armies for democracy.  

I have never condemned and shall never condemn the  path they chose because there had been ample cause for them to conclude the only way out of repressive rule was that of armed resistance. However, I myself rejected that path because I do not believe that it would lead to where I would wish my nation to go. 

Those who take up arms to free themselves from unjust domination are seen as freedom fighters. They may be fighting for a whole country or people in the name of patriotism or ideology, or for a particular racial  or ethnic or religious group in the name of equality and human rights. They are all fighting for freedom. 

When arms are not involved “activists” seem to have become the generic name for those who are fighting for a political cause: civil rights activists, anti-apartheid activists, human rights activists, democracy activists. So do we belong to the last two categories since we are constantly speaking out for human rights and democracy? To say that those of us in Burma who are involved in the movement for democracy are democracy activists would be accurate, but it is too narrow a description to reflect fully the essential nature of our struggle. 

A scholar comparing Indonesia under President Suharto to Burma under army dictatorship wrote that in Burma’s case the military had “held a coup against civilian politics in general”. In light of this insightful observation, it can be deduced that the mission of the NLD was not merely to engage in political activities but to restore the whole fabric of our society that civilians might be assured of their rightful space. 

We were not in the business of merely replacing one government with another, which could be considered the job of an opposition  party. Nor were we simply agitating for particular changes in the system as activists might be expected to do. 

We were working and living for a cause that was the sum of our aspirations for our people, which were not, after all, so very different from the aspirations of peoples elsewhere. 

In spite of the stringent efforts of the military regime to isolate us from the rest of the world, we never felt alone in our struggle. We  never felt alone because the struggle against authoritarianism and oppression spans the whole human world, crossing political and cultural frontiers. 

During the years I spent under house arrest, the radio, which was my link to the great outside, took me as easily to the far reaches of the globe as to the top of my own street. It was from the radio that I heard about NLD activities in the immediate vicinity of my house, just as it was from the radio that I learned of the breaching of the Berlin wall, the collapse of the Soviet bloc, the moves towards constitutional change in Chile, the progress of democratisation in South Korea, the dismantling of apartheid in South Africa. The books I received intermittently from my family included the works of Vaclav Havel, the memoirs of Zakharov, biographies of Nelson and Winnie Mandela, the writings of Timothy Garton Ash. Europe, South Africa, South America, Asia -wherever there were peoples calling for justice and freedom, there were our friends and allies.  

When I was released from house arrest, I took every opportunity to speak to our people about the courage and sufferings of black South Africans, about living in truth, about the power of the powerless, about the  lessons we could learn from those for whom their struggle was their life, as our struggle is our life.  

Perhaps because I spoke so often of the East European Movement for Democracy, I began to be described as a “dissident”. Originally Vaclav Havel did not seem to have been enthusiastic about the term “dissident” because it had been imposed by Western journalists on him and others in the human  rights movement in Czechoslovakia. He then went on to explain in detail what meaning should be put on dissidents and the dissident movement in the context of what is happening in his country. He held that the basic job of a dissident movement was to serve the truth - that is to serve the real aims of life - and that this endeavour should develop into a defence of the individual and his or her right to a free and truthful life. That is a defence of human rights and a struggle to see the laws respected.  

This seemed to describe very satisfactorily what the NLD had been doing over the years and I happily accepted that we were dissidents. The official status of our partyas seen by the authorities matter little because our basic job as dissidents remains what it has been over the years, and the objectives of our dissent remains what it has been over the years. 

SUE LAWLEY: Well now Aung San Suu Kyi recorded that lecture recently at her home in Burma. We now hope to have her on a telephone line from that same room. Daw Suu, are you there? 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Yes, I’m here. 

SUE LAWLEY: Welcome. Just let me explain to you that with me here in Broadcasting House in London, I have Robert Gordon whom I know you came to know very well when he was British Ambassador to Burma in the late 90s, and who subsequently ran the South East Asia Department in the Foreign Office. I also have with me Xenia Dormandy who was Director for South Asia for the White House and is now a Senior Fellow at Chatham House. And we have an audience of politicians and experts and dissidents from China and the Middle East, as well as Burma itself.  

I’m going to begin by asking Robert Gordon, who saw how your dissidence was treated by the regime when he was in Burma for four years: there was a moment, was there not Robert, when the NLD’s dissent began to bear fruit, when the regime actually engaged with Aung San Suu Kyi? 

ROBERT GORDON:  Well yes there was a little bit of a mini Burmese Spring just before Daw Suu started her latest bout of house arrest in 2002/2003 when Daw Suu was able to visit more and more outlying parts of Burma and address people in increasing crowds until the dreadful moment came in May 2003 when the shutters came down, there was this attack on her convoy, 70 of her colleagues were killed, and she very nearly lost her life. But very recently - and this is perhaps something that Daw Suu could shed light on - there has been a report that in fact behind the scenes there was some progress between the NLD and  the military government in the shape of the then Prime Minister, General Khin Nyunt. And, so the report says, an agreement of sorts was reached whereby the NLD would rejoin the National Convention. Perhaps, Daw Suu, you could enlighten as to whether this report is true or not? 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Yes, I had some talks with three representatives of the regime and I felt that these talks were genuine. I think we were trying to reach some kind of agreement. And, as far as I can make out, those who were talking to me also thought that we had reached some kind of agreement. But at the last moment, just a few days before the National Convention, this all changed. 

SUE LAWLEY: But you’re pushing hard at the moment - you’ve given these lectures to the BBC, you addressed the US Congress, you’re talking about intending to tour Burma - to tour the provinces. The generals have been patient so far. How much do you fear that their patience may run out? 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: I’m not sure that patience is a word that you should apply to them. After all, we have been patient for 23 years. And when you say that they are patient, what do you mean?

After all, it’s my right as a citizen to travel around this country if I wish to and it’s my right as a citizen of this country to say whatever I believe to those who ask me what I think.  

SUE LAWLEY: I’m going to bring in Xenia Dormandy who’s a Senior Fellow at Chatham House and an expert in your region. Xenia, what’s your reaction to hearing the way Aung San Suu Kyi has described the narrative history of her struggle? Are there lessons there for us actually in how we should seek to influence what’s going on in the Middle East, for example? 

XENIA DORMANDY: I think that’s an excellent question. I think that there is a message that could be picked up. There has been some success in some areas of the Middle East; there has been less success in others. I think we can all guess which ones fit in which camps. And the question is can we take some of the success of the use of technology, the difference between having an authoritarian regime that would shoot at their people versus those who don’t? And I would ask Daw Suu are there lessons for the international community, that you would like to see action from the international community that we saw perhaps in the Middle East that we haven’t seen in Burma? 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: I don’t think the world was as interested in what was going on in Burma as it is now in what is going on in the Middle East. It may be because we are much more aware of what is happening there. It may be because there are differences between the strategic position of Egypt and the strategic position of Burma. But I think that I would like the world to care for each and every bit of the world in the same way when it comes to basic human needs. 

SUE LAWLEY: I’m going to bring in Malek al-Abda. You talked in that lecture about the methods of dissent employed and you talked about violence versus nonviolence. Malek al-Abda is a Syrian dissident and a television journalist who’s now in exile in London. Malek, your question please to Daw Suu? 

MALEK AL-ABDA: In your first lecture, you talked about the possibility of a change in tactic given the brutal nature of the Junta in Burma. How seriously would you consider supporting violence to achieve goals? 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: I wouldn’t support armed action just because somebody else is calling for it. I place all my hopes in the young people of our country, but I wouldn’t support armed action simply because they called for it. I think if I were to support violence, it would only be because I believed that a short burst of violence, if you like, would prevent worse things happening in the long-run. Only for that reason would I ever support violence if I were to support it. 

SUE LAWLEY: I’m going to bring in Sue Lloyd-Roberts who’s a foreign correspondent who’s worked for many of the major UK TV news channels, Daw Suu. And she’s most recently been undercover in Syria, so she’s no stranger to the activities of a repressive regime. Sue, your question? 

SUE LLOYD-ROBERTS: Yes, I’ve just come back from Damascus, Daw Suu, and you may or may not know that you are an icon on the streets of Damascus. I met a Syrian woman protestor, a very brave woman who led the women of her district out onto the streets despite the fact that army snipers were shooting from the rooftops and she said you were her inspiration. I have one question for you. You were quoted recently as saying that “a charade of democracy can be much more dangerous than outright dictatorship.” I assume by that, you meant the Junta’s recent elections. Do you think the international community and some people in Burma have been fooled by them? 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Rather than fooled, I think people want change so much that they are deceiving themselves. They want to see change. So they want to see change so much that they start saying that there has been change. So far as I can see, there have been no real changes yet. There have been lots of very beautiful words, but those are not enough. 

SUE LAWLEY: (to Sue Lloyd-Roberts) Is it your view that the recent elections, albeit they were rigged, but then the release of Aung San Suu Kyi has damaged the cause of democracy in Burma? Is that what you’re suggesting? 

SUE LLOYD-ROBERTS: The release, no, because she has proved to be a huge inspiration and has done a huge work of advocacy since she has been released. But there’s no doubt that I think the elections let a lot of people off the hook. You heard a lot of international politicians say well you know these generals are trying. And surely that can be a very dangerous thing to think, which is why Aung San Suu Kyi so rightly said that a charade of democracy can be so dangerous. 

SUE LAWLEY: How far, Robert Gordon, are the people of Burma themselves fooled by it? After all they’re surrounded by a lot of other autocratic nations, aren’t they? Might the Burmese people actually think across the land that they’re not doing too badly? 

ROBERT GORDON: No it’s true that they are members of ASEAN, the Association of South East Asian Nations, which embraces many different forms of rule and sorts of democracy - some of which are highly qualified. So by the ASEAN yardstick, it’s possible that even this highly suspect election may not be so totally out of character. But I think that the Burmese people are very careful to listen - not least to the BBC and other radio stations broadcast into Burma - about themselves, and they will have certainly heard the many irregularities that have marked these elections and they will have seen for themselves how very different they were to the last real elections that happened in 1990.  

SUE LAWLEY: Is that why you want to get out into the provinces, Daw Suu? You actually want to talk to people beyond Rangoon to find out what they’re thinking? 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Yes, and I think it’s very important to be in touch with the people. After all, if you’re in politics it means you have to work with people. It’s not just to go out and campaign.  

People use the word ‘campaign’; they say that I’m going out on a ‘campaign’ trip. It’s not so much that. Let’s say that I want to go on a contact trip. 

SUE LAWLEY: But your problem is, is it not, is that your party’s been splintered by these elections because you boycotted the elections for reasons you’ve explained to us; but other parties stood, other members of your party wanted to stand and other ethnic minorities stood in Burma. So in a way the opposition has got fragmented, which is exactly what the regime wanted, isn’t it? 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: I wouldn’t say that the opposition has got fragmented because I think I can say, truthfully, that the NLD has the greatest support in Burma still, and, with the support of the people, that we are remaining as a political force.  

SUE LAWLEY: Xenia Dormandy, let’s talk about sanctions and trade. China spends four billion dollars. Well what does it spend? What does China spend in Burma? 

XENIA DORMANDY: A significant amount of money. (audience laughter) 

SUE LAWLEY: A huge amount. 

XENIA DORMANDY: I think the issue with China, with India, with the United States, with Europe, the question is interests versus, maybe, moral obligation. There is perhaps a moral obligation to act. We heard President Obama talk about a moral obligation when he chose to put the US to be involved in Libya, but how do you measure that against a national interest, whether it’s trade, whether it’s energy, whether it’s protecting one’s borders? And I think if you look at the international community activities in Burma, or lack of activity, and you compare that to what’s  gone on in the Middle East, North Africa, a lot of it comes down to this question of where does the moral obligation, balanced with the national interest, demand that our actions take place?  

SUE LAWLEY: Let me call in Simon Tisdall, a foreign affairs columnist and leader writer for the Guardian, of which he’s also Assistant Editor. Simon Tisdall, your point please. 

SIMON TISDALL: Well Daw Suu, you set your Burmese struggle in an international context, indeed a context of universal rights and obligations. I’m wondering are you dismayed, disappointed even, that countries coming out of post-colonial situations like South Africa - which you praised the struggle there - India, Brazil, as well as China, these leading developing powers around the world have not taken a stronger line on Burma, have not shown the support and solidarity that if we really are to have changes there, the international community needs to exert? 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: I am disappointed, of course, but at the same time I’m afraid that we have got rather used to it - that when a democracy movement, a human rights movement are in opposition, then they take a different line; but once they get into government some of them are not as supportive of struggles in other places as we might have expected them to be. There are exceptions of course, such as Czechoslovakia - or rather the Czech Republic now. President Vaclav Havel was very, very supportive of our movement for democracy when he was in opposition; and when he was President he was every bit as supportive. And there are individuals like Desmond Tutu who are exactly the same. I would wish more countries and more leaders to be like them, to remain true to the values for which they fought; once they have succeeded in their struggle not to forget those who are still struggling.   

SUE LAWLEY: I’m going to call in David Steele because I think this line is fading on us slightly and I do want to get your question in before the end. Lord Steele? 

LORD STEELE: I want to ask a more personal question. I knew your husband Michael during his terminal illness and I know how distressed you both were when he was refused a visa to come and pay a last goodbye. And I’ve also been in Cairo recently talking to members of the Youth Coalition who saw some of their colleagues killed. And my question is, is there too high a price to pay for dissent? 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: I don’t think so because if you think of what many of my colleagues have had to give up, what they have had to go through, then I don’t think you would even ask me the question - have I paid too high a price. There are many others who have paid much more, a much higher price for their beliefs. 

SUE LAWLEY: Did you expect her to say anything else, David Steele? (laughter) 

SUE LAWLEY: I’ve got one more point for you. Say who you are. 

BRAD ADAMS: Hi, I’m Brad Adams. I’m the Asia Director at Human Rights Watch. One of the things you said at the last lecture that was most impressive was that you felt mentally free throughout all of your ordeal, and what we’ve seen from change in other countries is that change happens when something happens within a regime. 

Their mental state changes. And I’m wondering what you think could change the leadership of the regime, the rank and file in the army? What would make them change their world view so that they would accept the principles and the values that you espouse? 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: I think it would help a great deal if they could be exposed to other people’s thoughts much more. We do not get through enough to the regime - partly because they’ve cut themselves off deliberately from the people, and partly because there is not enough effort from all directions to make them see that things are not necessarily the way they think they are. 

SUE LAWLEY: Xenia Dormandy, do you feel that there may well be a moment when you know the generals make another big mistake, which of course they did when the monks rose up in 2007 - suddenly they were putting up the price of food or reducing the value of savings? Do you feel that that is in the end how it will happen – the big “it”? That the generals will make a big mistake and there’s going to be much more communication, as there is in the Middle East, and the whole thing could take off? 

XENIA DORMANDY: I think that maybe I will revert to two things that President Obama has said in the last two months, or so. One of them is that these drives have to be internally led, not externally led. And the second is notwithstanding President Obama’s insistence that US actions in Libya followed a moral obligation as much as anything else, I don’t think that one should expect the United States, the European Community, other Western powers to choose the moral right over the national interest. And so I think that there has to be a question for those within Burma - is there a way to change the calculation so that national interests become more powerful, become more relevant? Is there a narrative that can be explained as to why democracy in Burma is so important that the international community should be taking actions that are otherwise not directly perceived to be in their national interest?  

SUE LAWLEY: Daw Suu, music to your ears, hmm? 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: Yes, but I think I would like to say that we would like more done on the basis not just of democracy in Burma but fairness and justice throughout the world. And we are part of the world, and it is not just that you’re doing something for Burma when you help us in our democracy movement. I think you are helping the whole world to have greater access to fairness, to justice, to security, to freedom. I would like people to think of it like that - not just that we’re helping this particular country or that particular country but as promoting more security, more freedom and more justice in this world. 

SUE LAWLEY: A last thought from you, Robert Gordon, before we say goodbye. It would be very easy to say that very little had been achieved by the National League for Democracy over the past 23 years because there hasn’t really been any continued engagement or any beginning - only one small beginning as we heard of engagement with the regime. No freedom has been won, there’s no dialogue. Has anything been achieved that you felt when you were there - and you can put your finger on now - by the heroic efforts of Aung San Suu Kyi? 

ROBERT GORDON: Well I think internally she has kept the flame of hope alive in a long and very dark period of Burmese politics, and that’s an enormous achievement in itself. And we heard from Sue Lloyd Roberts and others that in today’s Syria and other countries there are many, many people who look from outside at what Daw Suu is trying to do in her country and are drawing inspiration for their own countries. 

SUE LAWLEY: Daw Suu, are you happy with that as a summary of your achievements - that you’ve kept the flame alive? 

AUNG SAN SUU KYI: I don’t like to think of it as my achievement talking about what the NLD has done or not done. But to put it all in a nutshell, we have done as much as I think any party could do under the circumstances.

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