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The terrible choice facing DASSK



   The terrible choice facing Myanmar's opposition leader
   (ADDS student statement. Pictures)
   by Stephen Collinson
   
   BANGKOK, March 21 (AFP) - Aung San Suu Kyi told her British scholar
husband 
decades ago she would not fail in her duty to her people.
   But as terminal cancer ravages Michael Aris, the ultimate price of that 
obligation is becoming devastatingly clear.
   His illness has pitched the Myanmar democracy leader and Nobel peace prize 
winner into a terrible dilemma.
   Aung San Suu Kyi has often been confronted by the conflict between her 
instincts as a wife and mother and her political destiny during years of 
separation from her family.
   But her position has taken on extra poignancy as Aris is reportedly close 
to death.
   Desperate to say a final goodbye to his wife of 27 years, Aris, an expert 
in Tibetan studies, has asked Myanmar's ruling generals for a visa to visit 
Yangon.
   Aung San Suu Kyi's supporters doubt Yangon's generals will show compassion 
towards their bitter political foe.
   "It is very unlikely that the government will give him a visa -- they are 
using the situation to play a political game," said a Thailand-based exile.
   "It is brutal."
   The government has so far stalled on the request.
   While professing sympathy for Aris, officials argue Aung San Suu Kyi
should 
be the one to travel as she is in good health. They have also claimed 
Myanmar's medical facilities are not sufficient to treat Aris.
   But the prospect of leaving Myanmar places Aung San Suu Kyi in a tricky 
position, as many observers in Yangon believe she could be forced into exile.
   "The government would certainly allow Aung San Suu Kyi to leave and would 
give her a passport," said one source familiar with the case.
   "But the question is whether she would be allowed back."
   Officials have told AFP a decision on whether she would be allowed to 
return could be made only after she left the country.
   Aung San Suu Kyi's destiny can be traced to her father Aung San, who led 
Myanmar's independence struggle from Britain.
   Aung San was assassinated in 1947 but is still idolised in Myanmar as the 
founder of the army and a freedom fighter.
   His mantle is now worn by his daughter, who heads the opposition National 
League for Democracy (NLD), and is the key to much of her appeal, analysts

say.
   Despite a vigorous government campaign against the NLD, she reputedly 
remains "dedicated" to the cause of democracy.
   Consequently few observers believe she will make a trip to see her dying 
husband, whom she last saw in 1996.
   Western diplomats in Yangon, many of whom regularly meet Aung San Suu Kyi 
are reluctant to discuss how she is coping with the crisis.
   However, one described her as "very strong, with incredible charisma."
   "She has inner steel, she has been through so much, everything they (the 
government) could throw at her."
   She seeks solace in Buddhism, literature and international shortwave
radio, 
and is devoted to her two sons who have visited her several times, supporters 
say. Her eldest son Alexander Myint San Aung Aris was born in 1973, and his 
brother, Kim Htein Lin Aris was born in 1977.
   In the last decade she has faced six years of house arrest which ended in 
1995, continued limited freedom of movement and the severing of her 
communications with the outside world.
   In the foreword to a collection of Aung San Suu Kyi's writings published
in 
1991, Aris wrote of his wife's long-held belief that her destiny may lie at 
home with "my people."
   She left their quiet academic life in Oxford in 1988 to tend her dying 
mother in Yangon, and Aris wrote that he had a premonition then that their 
lives would change for ever.
   Aung San Suu Kyi soon emerged as a powerful symbol of resistance to the 
junta's iron rule.
   She has remained in Myanmar ever since.
   Diplomats say Aung San Suu Kyi would almost certainly win any new election 
and that her support remains solid in the country.
   But, as Myanmar's political stalemate drags on she is not immune from 
criticism.
   Some diplomats appear frustrated that she refuses to retract last year's 
call for the convening of the 1990 parliament. The NLD-led opposition won 
those polls by landslide but the junta has refused to hand over power.
   Reservations have also been expressed in some non-military sectors of 
Myanmar society by critics who say Myanmar's political torment is far more 
complex than the international media's cliched potrayal of a good against
evil 
struggle between an angelic Aung San Suu Kyi and a devious junta.
   "I am proud that Aung San Suu Kyi is Burmese, she is quite clearly an 
exceptional person who has right on her side," said one analyst in Yangon, 
speaking on condition of anonymity.
   "But in the present (deadlocked) situation I wish she could change her 
position, I fear her years hidden away have divorced her from what is
possible 
here."
   Few critics however are prepared to be too harsh to Aung San Suu Kyi in
her 
agonising predicament.
   Exiled Myanmar students in Thailand meanwhile warned the country's 
government Sunday that it risked perpetuating its pariah status if it refused 
to grant Michael Aris a visa.

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