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Burma's opposition leader tells why



Subject: Burma's opposition leader tells why she didn't visit dying  husband

Burma's opposition leader tells why she didn't visit dying husband
Sunday 4 April, 1999 (11:25am AEST) 
  
ABC

Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has spoken of her decision not to
visit her husband before he died in an interview published today. 

Ms Suu Kyi told The Sunday Telegraph that her sons Kim, 21, and Alex, 25,
urged her to return to Britain while their father, academic Michael Aris,
was on his deathbed. 

Mr Aris, her British husband of 27 years, died on his 53rd birthday in an
Oxford hospital last weekend of prostate cancer, the day after the Rangoon
authorities finally offered Ms Suu Kyi the chance to fly to Britain to join
him. 

"Imagine how hard it was to say no to them," she said. 

In the interview with Matt Frei, the BBC's South East Asia correspondent, Ms
Suu Kyi said that she had been convinced the military government would not
allow her to return. 

She accusing the junta of "political blackmail".

"After all, their greatest wish was to see me leave. They were desperate to
get me out of the country and they thought my husband's illness gave them
the perfect opportunity," she said.

Ms Suu Kyi would say little else on the subject. 

"I never discuss private matters in public," she said. 

"There are thousands of people who face the same dilemma that I have had to
face, who have to make these choices. 

"In many cases it is far worse. This is daily fare in Burma."

She added her colleagues in the National League for Democracy had urged her
to stay. 

"It was only natural, apart from being afraid they would lose a leader, many
of them fear even more reprisals and arrests than they are already used to." 

She admitted that the decision not to go was one of the most heartbreaking
of her life, but added, "this has the makings of a Greek tragedy? Oh don't
be silly. I don't go in for melodrama." 

Mr Aris, an Oxford academic and a distinguished Tibetan scholar, had not
seen Ms Suu Kyi since 1996. 

He was cremated at a ceremony attended by only close family and friends in
England on Thursday. 

Aung San Suu Kyi is locked in a political stalemate with the government,
which diplomats say has carried out a campaign of intimidation designed to
crush her National League for Democracy. 

The party won an overwhelming victory in elections in 1990 but the junta has
refused to hand over power. It is accused by human rights groups and Western
governments of serious human rights abuses. 


Mr Aris had made a number of visits to Burma since his wife, the daughter of
independence hero Aung San, returned to the country in 1988 and emerged at
the head of the pro-democracy movement. 

He was last in Burma between December 18, 1995 and January 16, 1996 but
several subsequent visa requests are believed to have been denied.