SCMP : Champion of democracy Aung S

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South China Morning Post

Thursday  July 30  1998

Champion of democracy Aung San Suu Kyi has generals tied in knots 

ANALYSIS by WILLIAM BARNES in Bangkok 
How the Burmese junta must long for a good old-fashioned conspiracy with
secret calls, axe handles of imperialism and clandestine meetings.

Instead, its propagandists are going red-faced with exertion trying to
defend themselves against a delicate, knife-thin lady who is currently
throwing them all around the judoka of international politics.

Aung San Suu Kyi, an open admirer of Gandhi and Mandela, has never
mentioned Sun Tzu's The Art of War. But she seems to have learned some
feints worthy of that 2,400-year-old Chinese manual for warriors.

Since Ms Aung San Suu Kyi's "release" from six years of house arrest in
1995, the State Peace and Development Council - the junta - appears to have
developed a policy of giving her just enough rope to be able to claim that
she is a free woman. She is not, of course. Only with difficulty can she
meet the braver members of her perfectly legal National League for
Democracy which trounced the army's puppet party in a 1990 election.

The last time she attempted to travel to the northern capital Mandalay the
authorities uncoupled her railway carriage.

Her friends and colleagues are regularly thrown into jail on trumped up
charges.

The secret police are everywhere: in the tea shops, in the few colleges
that are open, in hotels, even in her own compound on University Avenue.

The Nobel Peace Prize winner is generally painted as some kind of a saint
in Western press portraits, yet during the past three years there have been
rumblings of criticism of her "naivety" or her "obstinacy" as the political
stalemate has ground on.

She has complained that while some of her supporters want her to be more
aggressive, others have urged compromise with the regime.

The vivid mental picture of Ms Aung San Suu Kyi's long nights in her white
sedan has brought angry denunciation from the West - something the regime
has long learned to tolerate.

But the criticism from even "friends" in Asean will have rattled the
generals.

This might be a dictatorship on steroids - the military has doubled the
number of men under arms in a decade - but by adopting a position of fixed
menace the generals have made themselves vulnerable to a determined,
light-footed opponent.