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SCMP-Activist tells of heartbreakin



Subject: SCMP-Activist tells of heartbreaking decision not to visit dying

husband 
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Monday  April 5  1999
Burma

Activist tells of heartbreaking decision not to visit dying husband

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE in London
Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has spoken of her decision not to leave
Rangoon to see her dying husband.

She told Britain's 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.

Aris, her British husband of 27 years, died on his 53rd birthday in an
Oxford hospital on March 27 of prostate cancer, the day after the Burmese
authorities finally offered the dissident the chance to fly to Britain to
join him.

"Imagine how hard it was to say no to them," she said in an interview with
Matt Frei, the BBC's Southeast Asia correspondent.

Ms Aung San Suu Kyi said that she had been convinced the military Government
would not allow her to return.

Accusing the junta of "political blackmail", she said: "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."

Ms Aung San Suu Kyi said her colleagues in the National League for Democracy
had urged her to stay.

"It was only natural," she said. "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 said: "This has the makings of a Greek tragedy? Oh, don't
be silly. I don't go in for melodrama."

Aris, an Oxford academic and a distinguished Tibetan scholar, had not seen
his wife since 1996.

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