Posts Tagged ‘Aung San Suu Kyi’

P.C. Roberts: The Stench of American Hypocrisy

November 19, 2010

By Paul Criag Roberts, Foreign Policy Journal, Nov 18, 2010

Ten years of rule by the Bush and Obama regimes have seen the collapse of the rule of law in the United States. Is the American media covering this ominous and extraordinary story?  No, the American media is preoccupied with the rule of law in Burma (Myanmar).

The military regime that rules Burma just released from house arrest the pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. The American media used the occasion of her release to get on Burma’s case for the absence of the rule of law. I’m all for the brave lady, but if truth be known, “freedom and democracy” America needs her far worse than does Burma.

I’m not an expert on Burma, but the way I see it, the objection to a military government is that the government is not accountable to law.  Instead, such a regime behaves as it sees fit and issues edicts that advance its agenda.  Burma’s government can be criticized for not having a rule of law, but it cannot be criticized for ignoring its own laws. We might not like what the Burmese government does, but, precisely speaking, it is not behaving illegally.

In contrast, the United States government claims to be a government of laws, not of men, but when the executive branch violates the laws that constrain it, those responsible are not held accountable for their criminal actions.  As accountability is the essence of the rule of law, the absence of accountability means the absence of the rule of law.

Continues >>

Tags:, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Uncategorized, USA | 1 Comment »

Aung San Suu Kyi’s desperate plea to the world

June 18, 2010

By Andrew Buncombe, Asia Correspondent, The Independent/UK, June 18, 2010

Aung San Suu Kyi's lakeside house in Rangoon where a fence was erected last year
EPA

Aung San Suu Kyi’s lakeside house in Rangoon where a fence was erected last year

As Aung San Suu Kyi prepares to celebrate her 65th birthday tomorrow, confined in the house in which she has spent most of the past two decades, a confidante of the Burmese opposition leader has made a simple but passionate appeal to those in the West to use their freedom to help his country achieve the same.

In a hand-written letter smuggled out of Burma and passed to The Independent, U Win Tin writes: “I want to repeat and echo her own words – ‘please use your liberty to promote ours’. I want to add more to it. Please bring more and more liberty to us, to our country, Burma. We are starving for it and we are waiting for someone or some institutions or some countries to bring it to us.”

Continues >>

Tags:, ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Aung San Suu Kyi stands for her people and democracy

August 16, 2009

A single slender woman who terrifies an army of generals

By Badri Raina, ZNet, Aug 16, 2009

Badri Raina’s ZSpace Page

In Burma resides a dame,
Terra Firma is her name;
They lock her indoors,
But her pitying smile soars,
And the Generals are rendered lame.

Thomas Carlyle, that prophetic voice of the 19C, delineated in Heroes And Hero Worship (1841) what he thought were types of world-historical individuals.

Among them he projected Cromwell as a type of hero whose strength lay in a species of obdurate conviction that had no need of any flamboyant oratorical skills.

Two other figures from the 20C/21C spring to mind as further exemplars of the type, namely, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Aung San Suu Kyi.

No more true metaphor for them than the grass, which Whitman called the “handkerchief of the Lord,” fusing in a magnificently visionary way god with democracy.

The grass, it grows everywhere, however you trample on it. In its fecund unendingness, it symbolizes and manifests the will-to-life itself, and in its undefeatably cussed humility, it is the spirit of universal freedom and common democracy that refuse to be quelled.

And, as any good gardener knows, the more you cut the more it grows.

Which may be why the sensible British did not heed Hitler’s counsel in 1938: When Chamberlain went to reason with him, he mentioned Gandhi and how troubled the empire was by him.

Uncomprehending, the Fuhrer asked, “why don’t you shoot him?”

And had they done so, nothing might have brought about so early a collapse of the empire—and in predictably brutal ways.

Clearly, the two-penny tyrants in Burma who strut about in a prison of their own making—if Suu Kyi cannot leave her house, the Generals may not leave Burma, for they are reviled everywhere, including in those parts of the world who have shabby deals with them—have understood that much.

Thus, for their own wretched safety, they desist from doing that Hitler on her. So, we ask, are they winning or losing Burma? Losing, we think. And over that knowledge, Suu Kyi’s smile arches like that of angels, seeing far far beyond the events of any single day, beyond even her own life.

Continues >>

Tags:, , , , , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Burma’s nervous dictators try to quell the threat of Aung San Suu Kyi

August 11, 2009

Critics view the opposition leader’s trial as a brazen attempt to exclude her from next year’s multiparty elections

The detained Burmese opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. Photograph: Pornchai Kittiwongsakul/EPAThe detained Burmese opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. Photograph: Pornchai Kittiwongsakul/EPA

Amid the secrecy, delays and legal squabbling of recent weeks, there has been one constant in the fate of Aung San Suu Kyi: that her arrest for allegedly breaking the terms of her house arrest is a brazen attempt by Burma’s military rulers to exclude the country’s opposition leader from the political process.

Aung San Suu Kyi, who was sentences to 18 months in detention today, celebrated her 64th birthday in Rangoon’s Insein prison in June, sharing curry and chocolate cake with her guards, was arrested in May after John Yettaw, an eccentric American well-wisher, sneaked into her compound and stayed for two nights without official permission.

Continued >>

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Protests marking Suu Kyi birthday

June 19, 2009

BBCNews, June 19, 2009

Image of Aung San Suu Kyi on European Parliament"s building at Place du Luxembourg, 18/06

The European Union is taking part in the campaign to free Ms Suu Kyi

Activists across the world are marking the 64th birthday of Burma’s detained opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, with vigils and protests.

Celebrities including author Salman Rushdie and actors George Clooney and Julia Roberts have signed an online petition demanding that she be freed.

The European Union has also renewed its calls for her “unconditional release”.

Burma’s military rulers have held the Nobel Peace Prize winner under house arrest for most of the past 19 years.

She is currently on trial for breaking the terms of her detention.

Aung San Suu Kyi was charged after an American man swam to the house where she is being held, and stayed there overnight.

Insein jail

Observers say the charges – which carry a maximum punishment of five years in jail – are designed to keep Ms Suu Kyi imprisoned until after a general election which the junta has scheduled for next year.

While she is on trial, Ms Suu Kyi is imprisoned in Rangoon’s Insein jail – a notorious facility where many political prisoners are held.

Protesters in at least 20 cities – from Geneva to Kuala Lumpur – are marking her birthday with calls for her to be set free.

The BBC’s Jonathan Head, in Bangkok, says one of the most poignant events was the small celebration at the Rangoon headquarters of her political party, the National League for Democracy.

Her supporters there released balloons and small birds, and made offerings of food to Buddhist monks in her honour.

Burmese exile groups have launched a website called “64 for Suu” and invited celebrities, politicians and members of the public to send a 64-word birthday message to Ms Suu Kyi.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s supporters in Manila made a birthday cake and and spelled out the words “not guilty” with hundreds of red roses

In his message, British tycoon Richard Branson called her a “shining light for us all”.

Another message came from a group of female Nobel Peace Prize laureates including Guatemalan rights activist Rigoberta Menchu and US anti-landmine campaigner Jody Williams.

They said: “Your imprisonment and trial are a stark illustration of the brutality and lawlessness of the Burmese military regime.”

European Union leaders also joined the chorus of celebrities, activists and political leaders calling for Ms Suu Kyi’s release.

“Unless she is released, the credibility of the 2010 elections will be further undermined and the EU will respond with appropriate measures,” a European Council draft statement said.

Ms Suu Kyi has been under house arrest and banned from seeing all but a small group of people for 13 of the past 19 years.

Tags:, , ,
Posted in Commentary, Human rights, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »

Myanmar opposition vows to continue fight for Aung San Suu Kyi

September 24, 2008

AFP,   Sep 24, 2008

YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar’s pro-democracy party on Wednesday vowed to continue pushing for their leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s release after several of her close confidants were freed from prison by the ruling junta.

Seven dissidents from the Nobel peace laureate’s party were among the 9,002 prisoners freed Tuesday in an amnesty that state media said was ordered so they could take part in elections promised by the ruling generals for 2010.

The most prominent was 79-year-old journalist and activist Win Tin, Myanmar’s longest-serving political prisoner, who spent nearly two decades behind the bars of Yangon’s feared Insein prison.

National League for Democracy (NLD) spokesman Nyan Win said that although they welcomed the amnesty, they would continue to fight for the freedom of Aung San Suu Kyi, who has spent most of the last 19 years under house arrest.

“We will send an appeal for her release from detention this week to the cabinet in Naypyidaw,” Nyan Win told AFP, referring to the nation’s capital.

“We are always hoping for her release. There are still many long-serving political prisoners … All should also be released,” he added.

The release of Win Tin and the six other NLD members was immediately hailed by the United Nations, the United States and rights groups around the world.

“We worked together to defend Win Tin’s innocence and we are immensely relieved that he has finally been freed,” press freedom organisations Reporters Without Borders and the Burma Media Association said in a joint statement.

“We hope other journalists and prisoners of conscience will also be freed and that Win Tin will be able to resume his peaceful struggle for press freedom and democracy in Burma,” they added, using Myanmar’s former name.

Win Tin was sentenced to 20 years’ imprisonment on July 4, 1989 for acting as an adviser to Aung San Suu Kyi and writing letters to the then-United Nations envoy to Myanmar.

Upon his release Tuesday, Win Tin, still dressed in a blue prison-issue outfit but looking strong and healthy, vowed to journalists that he would continue to fight the ruling generals.

Human rights groups estimate that about 2,000 political prisoners are locked away in Myanmar.

Aung Naing Oo, a Myanmar analyst based in Thailand, welcomed the release of Win Tin and other colleagues of Aung San Suu Kyi but said the move showed the junta believed its hold on power was secure.

“I think the military is more confident now than before by releasing some key prisoners, including the longest-serving prisoner,” Aung Naing Oo told AFP in Bangkok.

“Maybe they think he’s no longer relevant or can no longer muster support,” he added.

Myanmar’s military government has said it will hold multi-party elections in 2010 but critics say the polls are just a way for the generals to solidify and legitimise their power.

Tags:, , , ,
Posted in Human rights | Leave a Comment »