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News Feature - Myanmar's Heart Hide
Feature-Myanmar's Heart Hides a Place for Suu Kyi
Reuters
08-SEP-98
YANGON, Sept 8 (Reuters)- They think twice before even
mentioning
her name, but Myanmar's opposition leader retains a special
secret
place in the hearts of her people.
"In Myanmar, first is Buddha, second is Aung San Suu Kyi,"
said one
Yangon resident.
In the 10 years since the crushing of a pro-democracy
uprising, the
country's military rulers have done all they can to destroy
the influence
of the charismatic daughter of national hero Aung San.
But judging by the guarded comments of Yangon residents,
they have
failed.
UNSEEN BUT NOT FORGOTTEN
Despite six years of house arrest, the severe curtailing of
her
movements, the banning of songs by singers who expressed
support
for her a decade ago, and roadblocks around her lakeside
residence,
Myanmar's people have not forgotten Suu Kyi and her
pro-democracy
speeches.
"She is a very good girl," said a one-time member of her
National
League for Democracy (NLD).
"I am not a member of the NLD, but I like Aung San Suu Kyi,"
said
another man.
Recent photographs of her are never seen in public. But
alongside
small Buddhist shrines in hidden corners of some homes sits
a fading
snapshot of Suu Kyi taken years ago.
It is a risk. If the feared military intelligence network
learns that
someone has been expressing support for Suu Kyi, that person
is
liable to be detained and interrogated, residents say.
"If they hear that I have said I like Aung San Suu Kyi, they
will take me
away and want to know why," said one.
PICTURES IN A MUSEUM
Photos of Suu Kyi as a small child can be seen at a museum
dedicated to her father, who was assassinated in 1947 as he
was
preparing the country for independence from Britain.
In the modest house where the family lived, there are photos
of a tiny
Suu Kyi with her father, mother and two brothers.
The "Bogyoke" or general is Myanmar's greatest hero, having
helped
to found its armed forces during World War II. His
daughter's voice is
one that is hard to silence.
Unable to criticise her ancestry, the state-controlled press
instead
attack Suu Kyi's choice of husband, British academic Michael
Aris.
Official articles refer to her disparagingly as "the wife of
a white" or
"Bogadaw"-- the wife of a British colonialist. "Bog" was how
Myanmar's people addressed British officials in colonial
times.
Newspapers on Tuesday accused Suu Kyi of trying to
destabilise the
country and called on the military government to deport her,
saying her
marriage to Aris made her a foreigner.
Myanmar's state media have repeatedly said that
Western-style
democracy was not an appropriate form of government for the
country
and that power could not be handed to the NLD. The party won
a
landslide victory in elections in 1990, but the military
refused to hand
over power.
Some analysts also have expressed doubts in the past about
Suu
Kyi's confrontational strategy, suggesting that Myanmar was
still too
poor and riven by too many ethnic divides to cope with this
type of
politics.
A POLITICIAN BY ACCIDENT
Returning to Myanmar in the 1980s to nurse her sick mother,
Suu Kyi
became the rallying point for the country's democracy
movement
almost by accident.
Now at 53, supporters worry about the toll her recent
protests are
taking on her health. Diplomats suggest members of the
government
may be deeply worried about who might be blamed if she died
or was
killed.
Some people believe that Suu Kyi might already have come to
power
in this former British colony had she not married a British
man.
"Aung San Suu Kyi made one mistake-- being married to a
British
man. If it was not for that I think she would be our leader
already," said
one resident.
NO POLITICS
While the government may have failed to destroy the people's
affection
for Suu Kyi, it has had other successes. Dozens of NLD
members
have been thrown in jail and the movements of those senior
members
still free are heavily monitored.
Ordinary people have been scared away from politics.
"No politics, no politics!" pleaded one taxi driver.
Only the activities of one political body-- the state-backed
Union
Solidarity and Development Association-- go reported in the
official
press. Foreign newspaper articles referring to Suu Kyi are
routinely cut
out before the papers are allowed to circulate in Myanmar.
Suu Kyi's latest protests have mostly come to their
attention by rumour,
or by tuning into the BBC's Myanmar-language news in the
evening on
a shortwave radio. On a day-to-day basis many of Myanmar's
people
have only the vaguest idea what is happening in their own
country.
"In Myanmar-- Ears deaf, eyes blind," said one man.