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3/4/99:A STING IN THE TALE OF SUU K



POSTED 20 APR 99, 5:00AM.

THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN, 3/APR/99

A STING IN THE TALE OF SUU KYI'S CHAMPION

The Burmese regime's cold spite has turned a private tragedy into a
political event, writes Peter Alford in Bangkok.

MICHAEL ARIS honoured Aung San Suu Kyi's entreaty before their 1972
marriage " that should my people need me, you would help me do my duty"
at considerable personal cost. But he always refused to let that intrude
upon her crusade for Burmese democracy.

For them, his fatal prostate cancer and their hope of being together one
final time was a private metter. Suu Kyi has asked that both the
"seventh day" Buddhist observance at her home today and memorial
services around the world honour the man, not propagate the cause.

Nevertheless, the cold spite of Burma's generals has ensured the
circumstances of Aris'd death in London last weekend will have political
repercussions. Some consequences are emerging already.

Attitudes in the US and Western Europe will harden further towards the
State Peace and Development Council regime. In Australia, the urgings of
people such as former ambassador to Rangoon Garry Woodard for the Howard
Government to ditch "constructive engagement" with the dictatorship will
gain momentum. So will the uneasy suspicion among Burma's ASEAN
neighbours that they made an awful mistake embracing the regime in 1997.

But the effect on Suu Kyi remains to be seen. "I found her wan but
mentally strong," said a friend who visited 54 UNiversity Avenue, her
home and prison for the past decade. "She appears to be holding out well
under the cuircumstances, with close friends and relatives in
attendance."

But Suu Kyi is 53 and her health is fragile. She is now counting among
the costs of what Aris described as "her inflexible sense of duty" the
loss of a brave, loyal husband and her continued separation from their
sons, Alexandeer, 25, and Kim, 22.

Their shared life ended on March 31, 1988, when they had been married
for 16 years. Aris was a respected Oxford authority on Tibet and
Himalayan studies and Suu Kyi was a wife, mother and part-time scholar
who had not seen Burma since the age of 15.

"It was a quiet evening in Oxford.. our sons were already in bed and we
were reading when the telephone rang," Aris wrote in his introduction to
her collection of essays, Freedom From Fear. "Suu picked up the phone to
learn that her mother had suffered a severe stroke. She put the phone
down and at once stardted to pack. I had a premonition that our lives
would change for ever."

His intimations were quickly confirmed. Within days of arriving with
their boys to visit Suu Kyi in July 1988, he found the University Avenue
house had become the centre of a national democracy uprising. They stood
with her on August 26 at the giant golden Shwedagon Pagoda, as the
daughter of assassinated nationalist hero Aung San told 500,000
people:"People have been saying.. that I know nothing of Burmese
politics. The trouble is, I know too much."

By the time Aris had been hustled out of the country for the first time,
the uprisong had been crushed at the cost of thousands of lives, the
army had imposed the State Law and Order Restoration Council (now SPDC)
junta and Suu Kyi had formed the National League for Democracy to resist
it.

Suu Kyi had irrevocable shouldered the legacy of "popular hope and
longing" from a father murdered when she was two. She was determined
never willingly to leave her country again, for fear SLORC would pervent
her returning.

>From then until Aris' death on the morning of his 53rd birthday, they
were together in Rangoon nine times. After a Christmas 1995 visit, Aris
was not allowed another visa--his punishment for criticising SLORC on
returning to London. Their letters and phone calls were constantly
monitored and often intercepted by Burmese authorities.

They spoke to outsiders rarely about their trials of separation. Suu Kyi
would respond to questions about their marriage and sons briefly, cooly,
almost mechanically. Aris was even more guarded. Almost all of his words
you will read come from Freedom From Fear, his only substantial
published reflection on their relationship. Even here it is the
intensity of his admiration for her courage and her "sure grasp of what
is right and wrong" that shows through most clearly.

In the public eye, theirs became a political relationship: Suu Kyi, the
gracefully unyielding democracy champion; Aris, her loyal envoy to the
outside, finally sacrificing even the possibility of seeing her in Burma
again by conveying her messages of defiance.

Perhaps it was inevitable that the circumstances of Aris's death would
become politicised, but that was not his desire or Suu Kyi's. They kept
secret his dying plea to the Burmese authorities to permit his last
visit.

For more than two months, Rangoon's London embassy had rebuffed secret
approaches from the British Foreign Office. During visits to Thailand in
February and early March, Burma's Foreign Minister, Win Aung, and Prime
Minister, Than Shwe, were asked to reconsider. They refused and the
matter only became public on March 18.

Then the regime said the visa request was under review. However, its
spokesman counselled, "it is more humane for a person in perfect health
to make the journey to fulfill her terminally ill husband's wish to see
her" and worried that Aris "might put an undue burden on the country's
limited medical facilities".

Despite these protestations, the history of relations between the
military and Suu Kyi suggests the SPDC was simply persisting in its
leaden determination to twist every circumstances into an opportunity to
force her out of the country.

But suu Kyi believed there had never been a more dangerous time to risk
being shut out of Burma.

Since August, when the NLD launched its latest campaign to force the
military to recognise the 80 per cent vote for the democracy movement in
1990, the SPDC has been ruthlessly grinding it down. NLD representatives
who won seats at that dishonoured election have been detained and
pressured to renounce their party. The NLD says more than 150
representatives and hundreds of other loyalists are still held.

For Suu Kyi to risk exile now would be to expost the NLD to far greater
pressure and the real risk of collapse.

It was only on Friday that the SPDC grudgingly proffered that it "sees
no difficulty for Ms Suu Kyi in returning to Myanmar". By then, as they
probably both knew, MIchael Aris was in a Coma. The regime's pantomime
of concern had become utterly pointless.

THE WEEKEND AUSTRALIAN, APRIL 3-4, 1999.
--
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