NEWS - Suu Kyi's Birthday Marked as

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Suu Kyi's Birthday Marked as Myanmar Women's Day

            Reuters
            19-JUN-98

            YANGON, June 19 (Reuters) - Myanmar opposition leader Aung
San Suu Kyi
            celebrated her 53rd birthday on Friday, with her opposition
National League
            for Democracy (NLD) party defiantly declaring it Myanmar
Women's Day. 

            Myanmar's military junta had said that it was strongly
opposed to the
            opposition's plan to mark the event as a national day for
women. 

            About 300 guests, mostly NLD members, arrived at her
lakeside house in
            Yangon early on Friday morning to wish her well. 

            Arriving guests were not prevented from gathering by the
military junta, but
            were checked by soldiers posted outside her compound before
they entered
            her home, witnesses said. 

            Earlier, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize-winner went to a pagoda
for a Buddhist
            religious ceremony at which she offered a meal to monks and
asked them to
            bless her, the witnesses said. 

            ``We are celebrating her birthday and declaring June 19 as
Myanmar
            Women's Day,'' an NLD member told Reuters as he entered Suu
Kyi's
            residence. 

            State-run Myanmar newspapers, which act as a mouthpiece for
the ruling
            State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), on Wednesday had
dubbed
            Suu Kyi the ``Veto lady.'' 

            They said plans to mark her birthday as Women's Day were an
insult to
            Myanmar patriots and to her late father Aung San who helped
lead the
            country to independence. 

            ``It will amount to an insult to the mother and father who
slapped the face of
            colonialists if attempts were made to designate the birthday
of the Veto Lady
            as Myanmar's women's Day,'' the papers said. 

            Suu Kyi's NLD swept the general election held in 1990 but
the party's
            landslide victory was ignored by the military, who later put
her under six
            years of house arrest. 

            Since then, the military and the NLD have been at political
loggerheads. The
            opposition claims that the military abuses human rights and
suppresses
            democracy, a charge the military has denied. 

            Suu Kyi was freed in mid-1995 and is allowed to leave her
house, but her
            political activities and those of the NLD have been curbed
by the junta.