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Life and death in the fight between



Subject: Life and death in the fight between love and cynicism

The Japan Times 1st April 1999
Life and death in the fight between love and cynicism
By HARVEY STOCKWIN
(Special to the Japan Times)

HONG KONG--Oxford University lecturer  and Tibetan scholar Michael Aris died
March 27 in a hospital in England, making  Myanmar's leading dissident, and
winner of the last general election, Aung San Suu Kyi, a bereft and
grieving - but still determined - widow, under continued de facto house
arrest in her family home in Yangoon.

Aris' death not merely ends a grim, battle with prostate cancer, but also
ends an equally grim confrontation with Myanmar's repressive military
junta, which denied him a visa to visit his wife since Christmas 1995, and
has even refused to permit one last visit to Yangoon over the last few
months, once it became clear that Aris was a dying man.

Most of all, the premature death of Aris, who was a specialist in Tibetan
culture, brings to an equally premature end a 27-year love affair built upon
the understanding by both husband and wife, that Suu Kyi's first duty was
to the people of Myanmar, born of being the daughter of nationalist hero
Aung
San.

Clearly indicating her grief and sadness, Suu Kyi was able to issue a
poignant tow-paragraph note through foreign diplomats Saturday, which said:

"On behalf of my sons  Alexander and Kim, as well as on my own behalf, I
want to thank all those around the would who have supported my husband
during his illness and have given me and my family  love and sympathy.

" I am so fortunate to have such a wonderful husband who has always given me
the understanding I needed. Nothing can take that away from me."

Throughout Aris' recent illness, the military junta played an utterly
cynical game, trying to use his terminal affliction, and his desire for one
last visa, as a means to get Aung San Suu Kyi to leave the country, thereby
making it easier for the authoritarian regime to conclude
their ongoing suppression of her National League for Democracy. The NLD
clearly won the 1990 election that the military themselves organized. That
result has never been honored.

This maneuvering over a visa culminated March 26,when an army officer
conveyed to Suu Kyi that the government was willing to let her go to London

to see her husband, providing she did not politicize  the trip. There was no
guarantee that she would be allowed to return home. Understandably Suu Kyi
quickly showed the officer to the door.

The government gesture was its belated and inadequate response to pressure
from all over the world and, as the military regime must have known, was
made as Airs lay at death's door.

On March 28, in the wake of Aris' death, the Myanmar government once more
offered all help to allow Suu Kyi to visit England for her husband's funeral
but again refrained from giving a categorical assurance that she would be
allowed to return.

The crucial point in all this maneuvering was that while the country's
military rulers have made a great show of allowing Suu Kyi to visit England,
Aris himself never made such a request, but asked only for a visa so that he
could visit his wife.

Even when they were married in 1972, Aung Suu Kyi made it plain that, one
day, her commitment to her  nation might come before her commitment to her
husband.

"I only ask one thing" she wrote to Aris, "that should my people need me ,
you would help me do my duty by them."
In a moving letter, written before their marriage in January 1972, she
accurately anticipated the future of their relation-ship:
"Would you mind very much should such a situation ever arise ?
"How probable it is I do not know but the possibility is there.
"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 atonement.
"And yet such a 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."

In the wake of the death of her mother, and the savage Rangoon massacre in
1988, Suu Kyi felt she was needed by her long-oppressed people, and her
husband unquestioningly supported her in that decison.

Since then, Aris himself has never asked Suu Kyi to come to England. The
only time they were occasionally together was when he was ableto go to
Myanmar. The last time was Christmas 1995, when Aris took a statement of Suu
Kyi's out of the country for her, for which he was denied any more visas,
even during this last final illness.

While some observers wonder if Suu Kyi might not be able to conduct an even
more formidable campaign of opposition from exile in Bangkok or London,
there is no evidence that she has even considered this option.

Her suspicions that the military might exclude her, were she to ever leave
the country, are well founded. For several years now, the military has been
trying to alter the constitutions, so as to make anyone narried to a
foreigner incapable of holding a position of political leadership.

Earlier, too, the regime refused to renew her two sons' passports, making
them, too, dependent on visas to visit their mother.

It may even be that  Aris was unable to have one last conversation with his
wife. Reports from Yangoon indicate that Suu Kyi's ability to make
international telephone calls has also been denied.


Faced with the sheer inhumanity of the governments' response to the illness
of Aris, every ASEAN  government -  Myanmar is,of course a member of ASEAN -
should hang its head in shame.

Circumstances and national considerations did indeed tear Aung San Suu Kyi
and Michael Aris apart. Their final separation must have been more than a
torment. But  Michael Aris helped Aung San Suu Kyi do her duty, as she saw
it, until the end.

(Havey Stockwin reports and analyzes Asian politics and diplomacy for the
Time of India and the Jakarta Post.)