Protesters look to 'mother of Myanmar'

Published on Sunday 30 September 2007 01:23

THE biggest political crisis in Burma in nearly 10 years has so far taken place without the leadership of the country's most famous politician, detained Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Rumours were flying that Suu Kyi, the daughter of Burma's independence hero General Aung San, had been transferred to Burma's notorious Insein prison.

Other unconfirmed reports said she had been taken to a military camp on the outskirts of Rangoon to meet the country's second most powerful general, Maung Aye, who had reportedly split from the country's leader, senior general Than Shwe, over differences in dealing with the demonstrations.

None of these rumours stood the test of time and in all likelihood she is still holed up in her simple Rangoon home, where she is in poor health and does not have regular access to a doctor. The 62-year-old has been under house arrest for 12 of the last 17 years.

The entrance to her street is guarded by soldiers and closed to traffic at night. But last weekend hundreds of monks walked right up to her front gate, offering prayers and benedictions. She met them with tears in her eyes. That was the last the world saw of "The Lady", as she is known inside Burma.

"It was an amazing thing to see her on Saturday," said David Scott Mathieson, a researcher for Human Rights Watch Burma. "That's something they are talking about all over the country now.

"She has always been crucially important in all of this and you can tell she still is important because she is still under house arrest."

Experts such as Mathieson and others maintain that Suu Kyi is Burma's sole unifying national figure that would be acceptable to a majority of the country in the event the military junta came undone.

She swept a 1990 election and should have been made the country's prime minister, leading her party, the National League of Democracy. The military junta refused to acknowledge the results.

Last Thursday, as thousands of protesters took to the streets once again they prayed for Suu Kyi's well being.

Rangoon resident Niang Cing said: "Everyone thinks of her as a mother to save all of Myanmar."

"She inspires the people," added Soe Myint, the New Delhi-based editor of the Mizzima news service, which continues to publish reports from first-hand sources in Burma, despite the regime's clampdown on the internet.

"But she has no contact with them or anything to do with the protesters. There is no leadership for this on the ground."