Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
"A Song about Sue and Chesse?"
"No, Aung San Suu Kyi, pronounced a little like Ong San Sue Chi."
Most of you know I have a bumper sticker on my Jeep that reads, “Free Aung San Suu Kyi,” so I get a lot of questions about who in the world this person is. That in itself is a tragedy considering if my bumper sticker read, “Free the Dalai Lama,” or “Free Nelson Mandela,” everyone would know who I was talking about. Aung San Suu Kyi’s situation is just as severe as these well knowns-more so, and the plight of the Burmese people that she represents is tragic, though ignored by most of the world.
I’m not going to get demonstratively political here, but for the sake of awareness, so I won't have to answer, "A Song Sue Who?" for a few days, and because it effects many close friends of mine who have been threatened with imprisonment, exile, torture and death, I’ll give you the Reader’s Digest version of the situation in Burma (Myanmar), and who is Aung San Suu Kyi.
First, Burma is made up of many tribes, but there are several major ones. The Burmese (or Bamar) tribe is the largest, and it is some members of this tribe that are currently ruling the country in the form of a military junta. For that reason, most who live in Burma do not call Burma “Burma,” nor themselves, “Burmese,” unless of course they are actually of the Burmese tribe. They say, “Myanmar,” or “I am Mon,” “I am Kachin,” or simply “I am Myanmar.” So, that's what I'll say here: Myanmar.
In 1988, the people of Myanmar held a democratic election. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Myanmar woman who was educated in England, married an Englishman, and whose father was a leader in Burma (when it was still called Burma), overwhelmingly won the election. The junta, led by a man named Ne Win, refused to recognize this election, gave a murderous speech rivaling any by Hitler, and ordered the mass murder of hundreds of students, women, monks, nuns, and commoners in the street, resembling the Tienanmen Square massacre.
The junta put Aung San Suu Kyi in prison, and has ruled Myanmar with torture, murder, fear, and restriction ever since. Aung San Suu Kyi has been in and out of prison and house arrest since 1988. Though she has been given the opportunity to leave her imprisonment (when her husband died in England, for example), she has refused to go knowing that she will not be allowed back into Myanmar. Her loyalty to her people, even from behind bars, is non-negotiable. Even though she is, in essence, powerless to rule the country from her bedroom, her mere presence gives the Myanmar people peace and hope. Without her presence, surely the already tumultuous situation would deteriorate into chaos.
What has the junta done that is so bad? In part:
*Starvation orders on villages. (Troops show up in a village and tell them that they are not allowed to farm or use their animals. If they are caught doing so-and the troops return regularly to check-the village is burned down. Thus, the people exile into Thailand or India where they are not welcome, often dying of malaria or land mines on the way, or they starve to death).
*Bombing border villages "as a means of controlling the poppy smuggling into Thailand.” I worked at a refugee camp with 74 children who had come from one of these villages. They had seen their parents, siblings, and friends killed. Obviously, though poppy smuggling IS a problem, bombing innocent people is not the way to handle it.
*Disallowing foreign press.
*Disallowing foreign television and radio.
*Arresting, torturing, or killing anyone who is suspected to be promoting democracy.
*Disallowing large groups from meeting, for fear of insurgency. Even the Universities have been closed, and when they are open, classes are held in campuses miles apart to prevent Democratic discussion and hinder organization. There is also the desire to promote ignorance, of course, to create a submissive people, similar to the Khmer Rouge stragtegy of the 1970's in Cambodia.
*Shooting down innocent people in the street- on more than one occasion.
*Possibly bombing their own people, and blaming it on Western nations. (Somebody bombed them in May 2005, and no one knows who, but we know it wasn’t a democratic country).
So why doesn’t someone go into Myanmar, forcefully remove the junta, release Aung San Suu Kyi, and fix this severe human rights violation?
Primarily, Aung San Suu Kyi strongly opposes this strategy. She, along with 90% of the rest of Myanmar, is Buddhist. Buddhism prohibits killing; therefore, she is seeking a peaceful resolution. In her attempts to reach such a solution, she has earned the Nobel Peace Prize, forced Myanmar to pass on its ASEAN chairmanship this year, organized students, interviewed with Western journalists, thus educating the world of the problem, written books, and has been a rock of stability in a deadly whirlpool. Even so, she is still under house arrest. If you’re looking for her, she lives at 54 University Ave., BAHAN 11201, Yangon, Myanmar. You can write to her. I don't know that she receives the letters, but if she does, I'm sure she appreciates the encouragement.
I don’t know how to solve the problems in Myanmar. I know I’ve been “asked to leave” (to put it mildly) for baptizing in Myanmar. I’ve been stopped on the streets in Yangon by soldiers and interrogated. I’ve had film ripped out of my camera. I've been careful not to congregate with more than a few Myanmar at once in public. I’ve been followed by “eyes”, as the Myanmar people call junta spies, in Shan State, and every Myanmar who comes to see me at my hotel has had to sign in and out, and state the purpose of their visit. But would they dare arrest me-an American? I doubt it. That blue passport in my pocket, in many ways, serves as a get out of jail free card, though I wouldn’t want to test that theory. But my Mon, Shan, Karen, Kachin. . . friends don’t have that pass, and they live in fear of being in the wrong place at the wrong time everyday. If you have an idea on how to fix the problem, contact Sen. John McCain, or other people in government who are aware and involved with the human rights atrocities in Myanmar.
Until there comes a solution, I try to encourage my Myanmar friends to hold onto the eternal freedoms that are available in Christ. No one can take that freedom away, not even those men in olive green uniforms, with shoddy boots and dangling machine guns that stand on every corner of Yangon. I pray for the safety of my Buddhist and Christian friends there; I pray that the UN sanctions work against the junta and not against my friends who work in factories that are closing due to the sanctions that are supposed to help them, thank Condi Rice for adding Myanmar to the “axis of evil”, if for no other reason than it raises awareness, and write little bits like this.
If history has taught us anything, it's that Myanmar's future doesn't look bright, specifically Aung San Suu Kyi's. The junta reads their history books as well, and they know that it is in their advantage to keep her alive long enough that she will die of natural causes under house arrest. Change comes in tidalwaves when a civil disobedience leader is killed for his or her beliefs. The Western world became Christian from Jesus' civil disobedience. (The crusades weren't nearly as successful, evangelically, as Jesus' method when he told Peter to put down his sword). England left India and the Hindus and Muslims agreed to disagree, thanks to Ghandi; African Americans gained civil rights from Martin Luther King Jr.'s efforts, etc...But all of these leaders had to die before great change came. For example, the Dalai Lama is alive and Tibet isn't yet free. But if a Chinese hit man assassinated the Dalai Lama in the streets of NYC, worldy pressure and awareness would rise. According to history, Tibet would then soon be free. The junta knows that killing Aung San Suu Kyi will bring more harm than good to their cause. So, sadly, it looks like she's stuck in her home indefinately while her people trudge around in the dark.
I got a birthday card from a couple of friends from Myanmar recently. I'll leave their names and pictures out of this, for obvious reasons. I also received several letters from Myanmar friends asking for more Bible courses. In all the letters I have from Myanmar people, there isn't one complaint in them. But there is a lot of hope and a lot of compassion. They are a people of profound kindness.
So now you know! I'm not talking about Sue, or cheese, or singing a song. :) She's a woman for whom I have great respect. If you think of it, thank God again that you were born an American, for the freedoms you have in Christ, and in America. Certainly, not everyone is so fortunate.
For more information:
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma
*www.dassk.org
*www.aappb.org
*http://www.freeburma.org/
*http://www.amnestyusa.org/countries/myanmar_burma/index.do
*Beyond Rangoon (the movie)
*Paschal Khoo Thwe's historical account, From the Land of Green Ghosts.
In The Quiet Land
(By Daw Aung San Suu Kyi)
In the Quiet Land,
no one can tell
if there's someone who's listening
for secrets they can sell.
The informers are paid in the blood of the land
and no one dares speak what the tyrants won't stand.
In the quiet land of Burma,
no one laughs and no one thinks out loud.
In the quiet land of Burma,
you can hear it in the silence of the crowd
In the Quiet Land, no one can say
when the soldiers are coming
to carry them away.
The Chinese want a road; the French want the oil;
the Thais take the timber; and SLORC takes the spoils...
In the Quiet Land....In the Quiet Land, no one can hear
what is silenced by murder
and covered up with fear.
But, despite what is forced, freedom's a sound
that liars can't fake and no shouting can drown.
as curious as a stranger in a new land,
when Daddy made all the scary things not scary anymore,
or the first time you saw a duck,
and you ate more of the bread than what you shared with them,
but that was OK because Mom and Dad loved you anyway, and your brother shared enough with our feathered friends for everybody.
as curious as a stranger in a new land,
when Daddy made all the scary things not scary anymore,
or the first time you saw a duck,
and you ate more of the bread than what you shared with them,
but that was OK because Mom and Dad loved you anyway, and your brother shared enough with our feathered friends for everybody.
