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The Spectacle Blog

Aung San Suu Kyi Is Free — For Now

By Aaron Goldstein on 11.13.10 @ 12:30PM

I am delighted that the Burmese military junta has seen fit to release Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest.

But how long will the junta’s benevolence last?

Let us not forget that Suu Kyi was twice previously released from house arrest only to be placed back into detention. After spending nearly six years under house arrest, Suu Kyi was released in July 1995 and remained free for more than five years until she was detained in September 2000. Suu Kyi was released again in May 2002 but was re-arrested a year later and would remain in captivity until this morning.

As of now the conditions of Suu Kyi’s release are unknown. If Suu Kyi opts to travel abroad will she be allowed to return to Burma? During her previous stints of “freedom,” the military junta has made it clear that she would not be permitted to re-enter the country if she left.

Life in a totalitarian state is arbitrary and capricious. While we should rejoice in Suu Kyi’s release we must also recognize that as long as the military junta remains she, as well as the people of Burma, will never truly be free.

Michel Gourd| 11.13.10 @ 4:18PM

Suu Kyi beautiful butterfly

Like the move of a butterfly wing that creates a storm, Aung San Suu Kyi release has the potential to wipe out the cloud of tyranny over her country.

Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, she has earned worldwide admiration. Aung San Suu Kyi symbolizes the struggle for democracy. Like Ghandi, she is committed to non-violence to bring about political change. All the countries of this world should now help this global symbol of moral courage achieving that goal.

The military regime is not interested in democracy. The parliamentary election was widely seen as flawed and fraudulent to ensure victory for the military's proxy party. Hundreds of potential opposition candidates were barred from taking part in the poll. The victory is a clear sign the military will continue to control the country. Not only the election is not a significant step forward, but it can also be the prelude of increase in violence as ethnic groups are pressured by the government to accept a new constitution disadvantaging them. The military regime plans to attack all armed groups refusing to surrender.

Western sanctions on that country, labelled by rights groups as one of the worlds' most corrupt and oppressive, should be reinforced. The international community must maintain co-ordinated pressure. Its now time to help Aung San Suu Kyi achieve her goal. She should have a say in all the money coming in her country from nations prizing democracy. Only in a position of strength, she can offer an olive branch to the military to work together to the coming of democracy. The world cannot wait and see. It is now or never.

Martin| 11.13.10 @ 5:51PM

Let's not over-sentimentalize the woman. Yes it's good she's free, but her daddy was a notorious WWII Commie leader who bore much of the responsibility for the mess Burma is now in. If she'd ever run the country she'd have been economically a leftist, so Burma would not have developed as has its neighbors.

What Burma needs is a Burmese Thaksin, an expatriate (presumably) billionaire who could sort out the economy and put the country on the road to rapid growth, without listening too much to the leftist apparatchiks at the UN/World Bank etc.

Sheila| 11.15.10 @ 11:55AM

This woman has actively courted martyrdom for decades. During one brief period when she wasn't under arrest for the sake of "her people," she managed to marry a Brit and have two sons, whom she then abandoned. She refused to leave Burma (and her martyrdom) to go to her dying husband's bedside. She hasn't seen her sons in over ten years, and other than a brief time, for years before that. They grew knowing that their existence and childhood were meaningless to their mom, sacrificed on the altar of her personal crusade. She's done nothing, accomplished nothing other than to let her children know, every day of their lives, that they just didn't matter. As Martin also noted, her daddy was a communist leader who bears much responsibility for Burma today - and she courts her martyrdom, she has said, in his "honor." I'm sick of posts about this woman as another Mother Theresa.

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