DISSIDENT ALLOWED TO CELEBRATE

[moe@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Published Saturday, June 20, 1998, in the San Jose Mercury News 


Dissident is allowed to celebrate
RANGOON, Burma (AP) -- Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was
allowed the rare treat of a steady stream of visitors for her 53rd birthday
Friday.
Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel peace laureate and head of the National League for
Democracy, usually has her visitors carefully screened by Burma's military
government, which is keen to restrict her political activities. The general
public is kept away.

More than 100 people, many wearing the party uniform of peach-colored
jackets and sarongs, entered her lakeside home in the capital, Rangoon,
after showing identification to state security agents outside her front gate. 

Visitors had to give their names in advance but otherwise were not harassed.

Party officials said Suu Kyi also held a private religious ceremony,
offering food to Buddhist monks.

Suu Kyi has spent most of the past nine years under house arrest or other
confinement in Burma, also known as Myanmar.