Australia: The Hon. Gareth Evans,

[azappia@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Subject: Australia:  The Hon. Gareth Evans, Statement in the House of Rep.s

Free Burma Coalition, Australia

	[P R O O F]

	Extract from the CURRENT HOUSE HANSARD
Database
	Date: 29 March 1999  (05:30)
             Page: 3836


GRIEVANCE DEBATE
Aris, Dr Michael


	Mr GARETH EVANS (Holt) (5.32 p.m.)--I take the opportunity of this debate 
to talk for just a few moments about the death of a man whom I believe this 
parliament and, indeed, the whole world should be honouring. Last Saturday, 
on his 53rd birthday, Doctor Michael Aris died of cancer in London, leaving 
grieving his wife, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, his two sons, Alexander and Kim, 
and a very large number of people around the world who had the most intense 
admiration, respect and affection for him.

	I was privileged to be one of those who knew him personally. We had 
discussions on a number of occasions, both when I was foreign minister and 
subsequently, about the appalling situation in Burma and what the 
international community might possibly be able to do to advance it.

	Just a couple of days before his death I wrote and posted a letter to him 
saying how terribly distressed I was to hear of his terminal illness and 
how disgusted I was at the news, which had, by then, echoed around the 
world, of the appalling cruelty of the Burmese authorities in denying him 
entry to Burma to pay a last visit to his wife. I said to him in that 
letter that I hoped he had some sense of the enormous respect and affection 
there was for him personally all around the world not only from those who 
had the privilege of knowing him personally, but also from those many more 
who had to be content with admiring him at a distance.

	I also said to him that few people can possibly imagine the stress which 
that enforced separation must have had on his personal and family life, 
compounded throughout as it was by the impossibility of knowing when it 
would ever end, but that his bravery and his decency had been obvious to 
everyone. Unhappily, and very sadly, he could never have received that 
letter, but I do think it is appropriate to put on the public record a few 
of the sentiments in it and to spell out in just a little more detail the 
nature of that bravery and that decency.

	Michael Aris was a man of great personal charm and warmth, with a calm and 
a gentleness about him characteristic, perhaps, of what one might expect of 

a scholar in the Tibetan language and literature; a calmness and a 
gentleness, however, that rather belied an immense inner strength. And make 
no mistake about that strength: he needed absolutely immense reserves of it 
to cope with the stress of the last decade. He was deeply and utterly 
devoted to Aung San Suu Kyi, his wife of 27 years, and one can barely 
imagine the pain that was involved in that separation and the 
responsibility that he had to keep his young family together, without the 
boys' mother, throughout that more than a decade.

	The obvious stress began in 1988 when Suu Kyi went to Burma to care for 
her dying mother--the widow, of course, of her father, the great national 
hero, Aung San--and then stayed on to lead the democracy movement in 
response to those tumultuous events of 1988; the hopes and the fears that 
were running throughout the community in response also to the horrors of 
the regime's attempted suppression of the democracy movement. Michael Aris 
identifies in the preface to his book the circumstances of that 1988 
decision. He said:

Suu picked up the phone to learn that her mother had suffered a severe 
stroke. She put the phone down and at once started to pack. I had a 
premonition that our lives would change for ever.

That is in the preface to the book Freedom from Fear and Other Writings 
that Michael Aris edited, putting together the work of Suu Kyi for an 
international audience.

	The most appalling separation was at the end, of course, but it was 
preceded by many long years of acute and enormous difficulty. He and the 
boys were completely denied access to her from 1989 to 1992--the years of 
house arrest and, indeed, total isolation--when, for two years and four 
months, the family went by without even a letter passing between them. Some 
visits were allowed in the period from 1992 to 1995 but, since January 
1996, again there has been no physical contact at all.

	The most appalling separation of all must have been in those last few 
weeks and days when both of them, Michael and Suu Kyi, must have known they 
would never see each other again--knowing that, if she left the country to 
see him in London, she would never be allowed back because forcing her into 
exile has been the absolute centrepiece of the Burmese regime's whole 
strategy for the last few years. It is nonsense, I believe, to suggest that 
the regime should and could have been taken at its word when it said that 
she would be allowed back. If it had been genuine, it would have opened up 
the option for him to come to Burma. It just refused to do that with 
utterly spurious arguments about the quality of available medical 
treatment, and the whole thing was a cynical and ugly exercise.

	But both of them bore this final separation with great dignity as they had 
borne all the others because they knew that what they were fighting 
for--Aung San Suu Kyi herself on the ground in Burma and Michael Aris as 
her voice and her presence throughout the rest of the world--was the life, 
the happiness and the future of millions of people and they were both 
prepared to devote their lives to that cause. Michael Aris made it clear, 

again in the preface to his edited book, that he understood the nature of 
the commitment he might one day be ultimately obliged to make. He knew that 
this day, this time, this obligation and this sacrifice would probably 
come. He said:

She constantly reminded me--

in the days before their marriage--

that one day she would have to return to Burma, that she counted on my 
support at that time, not as her due, but as a favour.

Again, he says rather movingly:

Sometimes I am beset by fears that circumstances and national 
considerations might tear us apart just when we are so happy in each other 
that separation would be a torment. And yet such fears are so futile and 
inconsequential: if we love and cherish each other as much as we can while 
we can, I am sure love and compassion will triumph in the end.

This is what he was writing in the early 1970s in anticipation of what 
might come to pass, and it did come to pass and it has been horrifying. I 
did not think I would ever find myself quoting John Pilger with any degree 
of approval, but he did write a piece in the press this morning which I 
think captures exactly what I want to say about Michael Aris:

Just as Aung San Suu Kyi is Burma's most famous heroine, her husband, 
Michael Aris, was one of its heroes. Michael, who died at the weekend, was 
not simply the Oxford professor who supported his extraordinary wife; he 
gave his life to the cause of freedom in that suffering country.

Might I say just finally in the few moments remaining that this is a time, 
this week, with this unhappy death behind us, for the international 
community and for this government and parliament to renew our commitment 
once more to achieving peace and democracy in Burma. The need is stronger 
than ever. The country is in absolute terrible limbo--economically, 
politically, in terms of human rights, in terms of the primacy of the drug 
trade and in every other way--and it desperately needs to break out of that 
cycle.

	No-one suggests that the task is an easy one. The leverage of the rest of 
the world is very limited. The lever of ASEAN membership, the main game for 
so long in terms of putting pressure to bear on Burma to behave better, has 
been lost with the admission of Burma to ASEAN in mid-1997. China, one of 
the other countries with real leverage, has obviously never been interested 
in any kind of political reform. Japan is interested and it does have real 
influence but, unfortunately, it is engaged in a rather misconceived policy 
of constructive engagement which has meant that its potential to really be 
influential in changing the course of action through the application of its 
aid policy has not been exercised at all. Japan has not been nearly as 
influential a force for good as it may have been.

	There is some small ray of hope with the package that has just been put 
together by the UN and the World Bank, presented last October by Special 
Envoy Alvaro de Soto to the Burmese authorities, in which it is proposed 
that political progress be rewarded with $1 billion in financial and 
humanitarian aid. That will involve some flexibility on both sides if a 

process of that kind can be put in place.

	I just want to conclude by saying that suggestions that are emerging in 
some quarters--for a long time in ASEAN, now in the US Congress more 
visibly and, I fear, in some quarters in the Australian government--that 
Suu Kyi's time personally has come and gone, that she is too intransigent, 
too inflexible, cannot lead the way forward and should no longer be 
regarded as the centrepiece of the democratic movement struggle, I believe, 
should be absolutely rejected. That diminishes her judgment and her 
intelligence which, I believe, have always been of a kind--and it is partly 
based on my conversations with her husband--that would lead her to be 
appropriately flexible whenever there was half a chance of that being 
reciprocated. To challenge her authority or question it in this way is not 
only to diminish her and her magnificent stature but also to diminish the 
memory of Michael Aris which it is totally appropriate that the world and 
this parliament, as I say, should be honouring this week.