AFP : Aung San Suu Kyi's son arrive

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Subject: AFP : Aung San Suu Kyi's son arrives in Myanmar

   YANGON, April 16 (AFP) - Aung San Suu Kyi's younger son arrived in Myanmar 
on Friday on the first visit by a member of her family since her British 
husband died from cancer last month, officials said.
   The democracy leader met Kim Htein Lin Aris, 21, at Yangon airport after
he 
flew in on a Thai Airways flight from Bangkok, a government statement said.
   Michael Aris, Aung San Suu Kyi's husband of 27 years, died on his 53rd 
birthday in Britain on March 27 after the government denied his request to
pay 
a final visit to his wife in Myanmar.
   Diplomats in Yangon said plans for Kim Aris' visit had been kept as
low-key 
as possible to avoid political complications. There was no indication if her 
elder son Alexander, 25, would also visit soon.
   Both of Aung San Suu Kyi's sons have been stripped of their passports by 
the military junta and would have been travelling on British documents, 
diplomats said.
   Myanmar officials have previously said that as Aung San Suu Kyi's sons are 
not involved in politics they have had no problem in obtaining visas.
   Michael Aris, however was accused of meddling in Myanmar's internal
affairs 
during his infrequent visits to the country.
   Aung San Suu Kyi is locked in a political battle with the government which 
lost 1990 elections to her National League for Democracy but has refused to 
hand over power.
   She turned down a junta offer to let her travel to Britain to see her
dying 
husband, fearing she would not be allowed to return.
   Myanmar justified its failure to grant Aris a visa by saying its medical 
facilities were too primitive to treat him.
   It also accused her of manipulating her husband's illness for political 
gain. The junta suggested that she should have gone to visit Aris in England 
as she was in good health.
   In an interview published in a British newspaper this month, Aung San Suu 
Kyi said her sons had asked her to travel to Britain to see Aris before he 
died.
   "Imagine how hard it was to say no to them," she was quoted as saying.
   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."
   Aung San Suu Kyi rarely alludes to personal matters in interviews, saying 

that many people suffer far greater personal anguish than she does in a 
country accused by foreign governments and rights groups of a catalogue of 
human rights abuses.
   Although no longer under house arrest her movements are strictly
controlled 
by the government. It has been accused by diplomats of conducting a campaign 
of arrests designed to crush her party.
   Aris, an Oxford academic and a distinguished Tibetan scholar, made his
last 
visit to see his wife in 1996. Several subsequent visa requests are thought
to 
have been rejected.
   Her sons have been more frequent visitors to the country where Aung San
Suu 
Kyi returned in 1988 and soon emerged at the head of the pro-democracy 
movement.
   Aris was cremated at a ceremony attended by only close family and friends 
in England earlier this month. Aung San Suu Kyi held funeral rites for him at 
her home in Yangon.
   After his death, Aung San Suu Kyi said she had been privileged to have had 
a "wonderful" husband who had always given her understanding.
   She met Aris in London in the early 1970s.

Thida (Thin Myat Thu)                 http://www.communique.no/dvb/
Web Editor                                    Tel: +47 22 41 41 43
Democratic Voice of Burma                     Fax: +47 22 41 39 29

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