THE BEAST AND THE BEAUTY IN MYANMAR

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Aung San Suu Kyi : The Beauty And The
Beast
Updated on October 31, 2016
Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi : unseen photos
Aung San Suu Kyi, the political icon of Myanmar (Burma), needs no introduction. This hub is not about the life of Aung San
Suu Kyi , but about her beautiful photos rarely seen by the public. You would have noticed that each photo of hers even at her
present age, exudes a beautiful regal aura in her character.
Justin Choo more
Contact Author

Who is the beast then? None other than the person who forcefully imprisoned her, depriving her of her proper status as an
elected politician. He is by no means the handsome prince.
Below is a brief biodata of Aung San Suu Kyi :
Date of birth 19 June 1945.
The father of Aung San Suu Kyi, Aung San, founded the modern Burmese army and negotiated Burma's independence
from the United Kingdom in 1947. He was assassinated in the same year. (See Youtube video below for "a brief
history".)
B.A in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (Oxford) in 1969.
Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1985.
Married Michael Aris in 1972. He was a scholar of Tibetan culture.
General Secretary of the National League for Democracy (NLD) which was formed on 27 September 1988.
Under forced detention, she was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990, and the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1991.
She is still under forced detention to this day. (Breaking News: Aung San Suu Kyi was released today Saturday, 13
November, 2010. See Youtube below. It is quite disturbing that the crowd could get so close to her. One lady
could even grab her and kiss her. And she stood high in front of her gate facing thousands of supporters.
This is very distressful for me. It is very very dangerous to expose her like that.)
Her philosophy: Non-violence as influenced by Mahatma Gandhi, and Buddhism.
Affectionately addressed as Daw Suu by fellow Burmese. "Daw" being an honorific similar to madam for older, revered
women. It literally means "aunt".
Take your time to view the photos and the follow-up Youtube videos.
Spare a thought for Aung San Suu Kyi and may she regain her rightful place in time to come.

(Latest update 22 Dec 2010 : Don't miss the last Youtube below, brilliantly presented by one of my readers dedicated
to Daw Suu)
New Year’s Day, 1972, Chelsea registry office in London. Aung San Suu Kyi and Michael Aris
married, aged 26 and 25 respectively.
Aung San Suu Kyi at her wedding reception, following a Buddhist blessing at a family friend’s
London home.

Aung San Suu Kyi on the snowy slopes of a mountain in Bhutan in 1971. Further up the hill, at
Taktsang temple, Michael had proposed to her.

The future Nobel laureate riding a mule up a mountain in Bhutan, 1971

Her husband-to-be, Michael Aris, riding a yak in Bhutan, where he was a tutor to the royal family,
1971

Aung San Suu Kyi’s mother, Daw Khin Kyi, meets her grandson, Alexander, for the first time on a
family visit to Rangoon. Michael Aris stands at the back. 197

A family picnic in Grantown-on-Spey. Aung San Suu Kyi with her husband (with the beard) and
two sons Alexander and Kim. The woman in the back wearing the headsc

1970/1980 on the lawn of her father-in-law’s house in Grantown-on-Spey, Scotland, Aung San Suu
Kyi plays with her two sons, Alexander (in the braces) and Kim.

From 1973 to 1988, Aung San Suu Kyi devoted her time and energy to motherhood in Oxford
where her husband was an academic.

Having a barbecue on a family holiday to the Norfolk Broads in the early 1980s

Aung San Suu Kyi
Tracy Huang

12/2/2017 Nobody’s Child - Vogue
https://www.vogue.com/article/aung-san-suu-kyi-beauty-and-the-beast 1/26
MARCH 1, 2011 7:29 PM
by ELIZ ABETH RUBIN
MAGAZINE
Aung San Suu Kyi:
Beauty and the Beast
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i
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me

Photographed by Gary Knight
Newly released Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is a powerful symbol of hope. But in her lifelong battle of wills with
the regime, who is really winning?
Burma is a strange place to visit these days, particularly if you are waiting to see “the Lady,” which is how most Burmese refer to Aung
San Suu Kyi, who was released in November after seven years under house arrest. Journalists are not welcome, so you can go there only
as a tourist. A foreign journalist can almost never speak to generals or mayors or oﬃcial people. And if you manage to get an
appointment to see the Lady—which is fairly easy since she and her party members believe it's one way to keep her ﬂame alive—you have
to stay under the radar or you'll get deported before you've had your chance. As for Burmese journalists and the some 150 privately
owned journals they work for, after publishing special pages devoted to her release, they were promptly summoned by the Press Scrutiny
and Registration Division (that censorship board required of all good tyrannies) and “advised” not to publish any more interviews with
f i

her. Why? Was it because, in the generals' rendition (as they wrote in the state newspaper), Aung San Suu Kyi is an “evil ogress” who, if
allowed, would “build her imperial palace on the skeletons and corpses of the nation”? Or was Senior General Than Shwe simply peeved
with all the attention she was getting?
In the real-life chronicles of Burma's Beauty and the Beast—Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi and military dictator Than Shwe—one
episode stands out for its particular combination of whimsy, cruelty, and obsession: A few years ago Than Shwe (who is now 78 and has
ruled Burma for the past two decades) decided to develop fuel through the mass production of physic-nut shrubs. Farmers across the
country were ordered to plant them—despite the fact that the seeds contain toxins and poisoned dozens of children. Apparently the
reason for Than Shwe's fixation on the nuts had less to do with their oil-producing capacities than with their Burmese name—kyet suu.
The two words are associated with Monday-Tuesday, and days of the week are so important in Burmese astrology that newborns are
named, in part, after the day of their birth. Aung San Suu Kyi's name (pronounced “Awng San Soo Chee”) is associated with Tuesday-
Monday. So reportedly one of Than Shwe's astrologers advised him to plant Monday-Tuesday nuts all over Burma to exterminate her
powers and “prevent her seeds of dissent from taking root.”
Seven million acres were taken over from farmers for the project, and even city dwellers were ordered to cultivate the nuts on their
balconies. Why? Why all this mystical effort to bring down a 65-year-old widow who has been locked away in her house in virtual solitary
confinement for fifteen out of the last 22 years? Why not just kill her? After all, they tried in 1996 and in 2003. They've had no
compunction about razing villages and imprisoning thousands of protesters. In 2007 they didn't hesitate to beat peacefully demonstrating
monks to death during what's come to be known as the Saffron Revolution.
Perhaps more puzzling is why Aung San Suu Kyi elicits such anger and hatred from these omnipotent kleptocrats. They hold all the riches
and power in this lush tropical country—rubies, jade, teak, gold, a 400,000-man army, billions in Chinese, Indian, and Thai investments.
In their strategic paranoia, they managed to spend billions of dollars secretly erecting, in Fitzcarraldo-like fashion, a brand-new capital in
the middle of the jungle. Believing himself a reincarnation of the old Burmese warrior kings, Than Shwe dubbed his new city Naypyidaw,
the “seat of kings.” A U.S. diplomat told me the place was indescribable; then he described it perfectly: “a Nazi Disney World.”
“They're jealous,” says an elderly academic, who does not want me to use his name, when we meet for tea at the stately Hotel Savoy:
“This meeting never happened.” Jealous of what? Like in high school? Because she's more popular?
What that jealousy means is that Burma, or Myanmar, as the generals renamed it to erase any association with the English colonial name,

has become the locus of a drama that is as much about politics as it is a personal vendetta against a woman who has captured the
imagination of the people and the world. In a drama like this, every detail has a way of shaping a narrative of destiny—not just by
sympathetic biographers and activists but by the angry dictator himself, who is doing almost everything in his power to rewrite Burmese
history. And write her out of the story.
The National League for Democracy—Aung San Suu Kyi's party—is housed in an unassuming, wood-framed, two-story office along a busy
commercial road around the corner from the Hotel Savoy. The walls, tables, and shelves are covered in iconic posters and postcards of
her. An old placard saying, CHILD LABOR IS NO GAME lies sideways atop a musty old glass cabinet. A banner slung across one wall
and signed by hundreds reads, FREE AUNG SAN SUU KYI. Piles of paper are stacked here and there near megaphones and generator
adapters and enormous pots for crowd cooking.
Behind a small glass counter sits a middle-aged woman selling photographs of the Lady and greeting cards she designed by computer
during her detention. It feels at once like the ramshackle party headquarters that it is and the home of a cult. Everyone is busy and
chatting, waiting for the Lady to arrive. And as soon as she does, the room freezes and digital cameras and cell phones are instantly
switched on to record her every move. Across the street, the special police sitting with earphones in the back of a pickup truck are also
filming everyone going in and out.
Aung San Suu Kyi is dressed in a soft pink blouse and a mauve sarong with blue, pink, and lavender flowers. In her hair above the nape of
her neck rest two white roses. She stops to greet a 90-year-old man who has traveled from Malaysia just to see her and pay his respects.
She wishes him many more years so he can return when he's 100. And then she's gone, upstairs to meet the first of five journalists from
around the world who've come to interview her today.
Of all the images in that packed office, one stands out. It is of Aung San Suu Kyi and her father, Aung San, and it hangs over the entrance.
He's in the background: youthful, fierce, and frozen at the age of 32. A photo of her is superimposed in the foreground. She looks to be
in her late 50s, more like his mother than his daughter. What glares out is his uniform—the officer's cap and blazer. Here is the founder of
the modern Burmese army that is today tyrannizing his daughter and the nation.

Aung San was one of a circle of revolutionaries who rose up against British colonial rule. In 1947, before he could realize his dream of an
independent Burma under civilian rule, he was assassinated by political rivals. Nevertheless, for the next fifteen years, there were
elections, parliament, a constitution. All that came to a bleeding halt in 1962, when General Ne Win—a “friend” and cohort of Aung San
—overthrew the government, installed a military dictatorship to pursue the Burmese Path to Socialism, and later “civilianized” it under
one-party rule. It must have made Ne Win's blood boil to see the daughter of Aung San return in 1988 to visit her sick mother and then,
as if out of the blue, assume the mantle—in her father's name—of a nonviolent democracy movement. A month later she was named
secretary general of the newly formed National League for Democracy (NLD). The following year Suu Kyi, who had previously been
written off as a foreign housewife with little interest in politics, was put under house arrest.
When I finally meet her upstairs in a quiet, simple office, she talks less of her father than of her mother, Khin Kyi, from whom she
learned her first two words of English. They were selfish and waste. She tolerated neither. “Her life was service. And I suppose that is
where I grew up also believing for one's life to be really meaningful, one must serve.” The young Aung San Suu Kyi and her brothers were
raised under the strict tutelage of Khin Kyi, who became Burma's first female ambassador to India. “I was a bit of a coward when I was
small. I was terribly frightened of the dark,” she recalls with a breathy laugh. “She didn't approve of that at all, because she was
frightened of nothing.” So at the age of eleven, Suu Kyi would go downstairs and wander around at night in the dark, petrified. After a
few days she conquered her fear. “I'm glad I got used to it because if I hadn't, I would have found it difficult to live on my own there for
all those years,” she says, “there” being 54 University Avenue, the run-down two-story colonial-style villa on the lake that is her home and
sometime prison.
Until her years of house arrest began, Suu Kyi lived as if in an Asian version of a Jane Austen novel (she's read almost all of them, along
with Dickens and Sherlock Holmes—“My first love!” she tells me). She attended an all-girls college in Delhi, rode horses, arranged
flowers, mingled with diplomats and political leaders, studied piano and foreign languages. At nineteen, she went to Oxford, where she
fell in love with Michael Aris, a charming young scholar of Tibetan and Buddhist studies. Separated for nearly three years—Aris was hired
to tutor the royal family in Bhutan; she came to NYU on a postgraduate program, then went to work for the U.N.—Suu Kyi and Aris
conducted a romance in letters that are today locked away in the Bodleian Library and will undoubtedly appear as part of the movie
version of Aung San Suu Kyi's life. (The week before I arrived in Burma, the actress Michelle Yeoh, best known for her role in Crouching
Tiger, Hidden Dragon, spent the day with Suu Kyi doing research for a Luc Besson biopic.) The couple eventually married in London,
lived in Bhutan, and then settled in Oxford, where she brought up her two sons, gave dinner parties for Oxford intellectuals, researched

and wrote about Burmese history, including a short book about her father, and continued her lifelong study of Gandhi's civil-
disobedience movement against tyranny.
Like other activists in Burma, Suu Kyi and her family paid a heavy price for the political struggle. After 1988, she never really lived again
with her sons, Alexander and Kim, who at the time were fifteen and eleven. In 1997 Michael Aris was diagnosed with prostate cancer.
The regime refused him a visa to visit his wife. Even as he lay in the hospital dying two years later, the generals hounded her, cutting the
phone lines whenever they tried to speak. She never saw her husband again.
With such an epic story, it's hard not to expect jewels to fall from Suu Kyi's lips in an interview. But her release is no “Mandela moment,”
as she reminds me. (After all, Mandela's release came at the end of negotiations.) In person, Suu Kyi exudes an air of total self-control,
social grace, moral perfection, and even a prudish purity. The perfect widow, the “perfect hostage,” as Justin Wintle has so aptly titled
his biography of her. One of her friends from Oxford once said that she brings out the best in you, straightens your back, so to speak.
What you don't expect is the little outbursts of humor or irreverence, and the hints of her father's temper. She jokes about becoming
more fond of poetry in her old age, mentioning a spoof of “Casabianca,” a poem by Felicia Dorothea Hemans that she'd had to
memorize as a child. The original begins: “The boy stood on the burning deck/Whence all but he had fled./The flame that lit the battle's
wreck/Shone round him o'er the dead. . . .” It goes on to describe his obedient stoicism as he waits for his father's permission to leave.
The parody she loved: “The boy stood on the burning deck/Whence all but he had fled./Twit!” As soon as she says the word, she laughs
at herself as if she knows how funny it is to hear Aung San Suu Kyi say “Twit.” “I rather tended to agree with that. I always thought it was
very silly of him to have just stood on the deck saying, ‘Father, Father.’ ” This is about the most she gives of her inner world, but in these
moments you can feel the traces of charged charisma that has made her irresistible to millions of Burmese.
Under house arrest she was vigilant, disciplined, and regimented—which probably kept her sane as well. She had no Internet, no satellite
television, no phone. The radio was her lifeline; she listened five or six hours a day. “That was a job, really, whether I liked it or not.” She
regularly meditated and kept fit. Her devoted bodyguard, who only recently came out of prison himself, tells me she was still using old
Jane Fonda and Olivia Newton-John workout videos. But mostly she had a lot of time to read and think. “I have to confess I got very fond
of Jean Valjean, my hero,” she says, referring to the protagonist of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables. In the book, Valjean redeems himself
under various assumed identities after being branded a criminal for stealing bread. “The whole novel was about revolutions, wasn't it?”

A few weeks earlier Aung San Suu Kyi had spoken to John Simpson of the BBC, who tried to compare the Burmese situation with the
Czech Velvet Revolution. “This created a bit of a stir,” she says, not hiding her irritation. “People said revolution”—gasp!—“that's violence.
Which is nothing of the kind. Revolution simply means significant change. A significant changeover, if you like, and I've always said that
the Burmese revolution for democracy has to be a revolution of the spirit. The Burmese people have to understand that they are the ones
who can achieve change, to accept the responsibility of shaping the destiny of our country.”
Than Shwe is often characterized as a psychopath in the great tradition of Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe, even North Korea's “dear leader,”
Kim Jong-il. Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew has gone further, comparing the generals to zombies—meeting with them, he has said, is like
“talking to dead people.” And yet Than Shwe has played a masterful game in outwitting, out-crushing, and out-waiting his military rivals,
the ethnic-minority insurgent groups, the democratic opposition, the West, and even Burma's national hero, Aung San Suu Kyi. Today her
party, the NLD, is often characterized by Western diplomats, activists, and even onetime members as an out-of-touch relic, consisting
mostly of “old uncles.” The majority of the party's intellectuals are either in prison or in exile. And Suu Kyi herself is blamed almost as
much as Than Shwe for the country's isolation.
If Than Shwe has played into a fairy tale about Aung San Suu Kyi, it is perhaps not the one she would have chosen. Shut away for so long,
the Lady of the Lake has become some twisted amalgam of Rip Van Winkle and Sleeping Beauty. She's been in a cocoon, radio or no
radio. Even her supporters in Rangoon say her thinking is outdated, stuck in a time of pure ideals and principles when the masses were
ready for ideological upheaval and change. The qualities once so admired by her adoring followers now seem a liability. Her poise looks
like rigidity; her self-control like political inflexibility. “Gaps. Generation gap. Technology gap. Even the ideological gap,” a well-known
Burmese writer told me, describing the new environment she must adapt to. “And the ideological is her biggest challenge.”
Suu Kyi's powerful essays and speeches from the 1990s all return to the idea that man is more than an economic creature, but after 50
years of military kleptocracy, malnutrition, rampant HIV, malaria, infant mortality, one of the worst health systems in the world, and a
devastating cyclone killing some 220,000 that the authorities did little to respond to, what energy is left for moral principles? Even the
monks who took to the streets in 2007 did so because of massive overnight fuel hikes that no one could afford. So when Suu Kyi called
for investigations into the fraudulent elections of early November, very few people were on her side. Everyone knew they were a sham.
When she called for a review of the generals' new constitution, again no one cared. As an economist said to me, “I told her the people
want rice!”
Rangoon is a hard city to read. Much of what really goes on is invisible. There are no soldiers or tanks on the streets. The fear instilled by

the regime is more insidious and internalized. What you do feel the minute you arrive is its isolation, the listlessness of a place left
behind. The bars and cafés are a collage of Asian gaudy, mid-century milk bars, and the American West—John Denver and country-and-
Western are big in the karaoke scene. The Victorian-era colonial buildings remain but have been abandoned to monsoon erosion. The
taxis should be preserved in a museum to human ingenuity: They are shells of their former Toyota selves—scrap metal bumping along
with a car battery. World War II Jeeps are jerry-rigged with wires and batteries to haul truck beds. I visit a village in Central Burma where
no tourists have been for years. It is medieval. Oxen are still pulling carts full of hay. There's no irrigation. Water is hauled in barrels from
outside the village or captured in vats from the rain. And there's no electricity. Burma used to be the jewel of Asia, one of its most
educated and advanced nations. But as soon as the generals gleaned that education and students were the real threat to their power, they
began sapping them of resources and even premises. Beautiful old Rangoon University is a collection of abandoned buildings and grass.
Students have to travel out of the city to study. “The character of the people has also eroded. Morality's lost,” says Kyaw Thu, one of
Burma's most celebrated film stars. “Bribery is normal now. Young girls work in karaoke and massage parlors. The only focus is money
for survival.”
Banned from filmmaking for daring to feed monks during the 2007 demonstrations, Kyaw Thu and his wife, Myint Myint Khin Pe, spend
seven days a week running the Free Funeral Services and a health-care clinic on a former dump site on the outskirts of Rangoon. He
looks like a Samurai warrior, with a long ponytail, earrings, a black sarong, and a Nehru-style linen waistcoat. His wife does most of the
talking. Like everyone else I meet in Rangoon, they are great admirers of Aung San Suu Kyi. But they also fear the effect that a visit from
her could have on their center. After she showed up at her own party's HIV clinic, the government threatened to shut it down and shift
the patients to a state-run facility. Kyaw Thu visited the clinic with a famous Burmese singer and director and urged the government on
TV to have sympathy for the patients. Miraculously, inexplicably, the regime relented. I ask his wife if she thinks Aung San Suu Kyi has
any power to help the country anymore. “If she doesn't confront the regime too much,” she says and smiles. “They are very powerful. She
must be clever.”
Outside the center, Kyaw Thu points to their fleet of hearses. In Burmese tradition, a gravedigger is at the lowest level of society. No one
wants to touch the dead, yet death is the hardest time for a family, and no one can afford to pay for funerals. Kyaw Thu had watched as
anonymous bodies were piled into the hearse taking his wealthy grandmother to her grave and decided he never wanted to see that again.
But he also knows that to work for the poor, he has to compromise with the rich. One of the hearses—a Japanese import—is decorated
with a tall, tiara-like gold sculpture rising high above the windshield. It is reserved for monks, people over 80, and, yes, the military.

Times have changed. Ideology is out. Pragmatism is in. And this applies to the sanctions debate that has re-emerged with Aung San Suu
Kyi's release. For the last fifteen years, the West has punished the regime for its brutality with sanctions. And as long as Suu Kyi and her
exiled lobby groups advocate for them, it's unlikely that any Western politician or donor will have the nerve to go up against a Nobel
Peace laureate's moral hard line. So there's no World Bank or International Monetary Fund assistance, no microloans, and very little
humanitarian aid, almost the lowest per capita in the world.
“In 1996 she said, ‘It's no time for humanitarian aid. We need political change.’ Well, I wish you luck, but in the meantime the people are
dying like rats,” said an outraged European doctor, swigging the end of his beer and ordering another. We were at the 365 Café, a noodle
bar with menus in English, bad techno music, and plastic vines festooning the place. We were the only ones there: too expensive for most
Burmese. “Because we don't like the generals, we don't give lifesaving drugs to people? Does that make sense?”
Put like that? Of course not. But sanctions and divestment certainly assisted the cause of anti-apartheid in South Africa. In Burma,
however, sanctions have left the country hostage to its ravenous neighbors. China, India, and Thailand are pillaging its natural resources,
building massive dams and industrial zones with no environmental regulations or concern for the displacement of thousands of farmers.
“The Chinese dump cyanide for gold-dredging in the Irrawaddy River, so villagers have stopped eating the fish,” a Burmese woman who
works in rural development told me. She would rather deal with Western companies, which at least must abide by some regulations. “The
government doesn't know anything about pollution standards. They are military guys in the Dark Ages. We need to bring in fresh air. We
need to de-isolate the military.”
There is a movement afoot in Rangoon that some are calling the third force or middle way. Its adherents want to open up the country to
Western companies, and they want training programs for civil society that would include people from the regime—whether police or civil
servants. Compromise: That is what everyone wants from Aung San Suu Kyi. She says she has always been ready to enter into a dialogue
with the generals. Her problem is that she is not very good at lying, making nice, smiling at evil. During her periods of freedom, in 1996
and 2001, the generals would take her to see their bridges and roads, expecting her to say, “Oh, you've done such a nice job.” They
wanted her approval. Instead, all she could see was that the bridges led nowhere, that they were built by forced labor, that the people
they were meant for had no education or health care. When they took her to see their projects in the north, all she could see was the
Chinafication of the region—casinos, prostitutes, Chinese karaoke.
What I heard from writers, editors, development workers, activists, and artists was the desire for a new role for their Nobel laureate,
something above the dirty fray of politics. They want her to abandon party politics, become a mediator between the people and the

military and an advocate for democracy. Ironically, it is the old Beauty and the Beast story; they just want the ending now. “Treat the
generals with kindness. Respect them. Remember they are male-chauvinist pigs, so charm them and make yourself an asset,” says the old
academic I met at the Hotel Savoy. In other words, kiss the beast into a prince—or at least something the country can live with.
So much is pinned on Aung San Suu Kyi. Despite their frustrations with her, she remains the most potent symbol of hope in Burma.
People want her to be a psychological strategist, an economist, and a benevolent godmother to the people and the junta. Which may
explain her wistful last words to me. “I don't think I have achieved anything that I can really be proud of,” she said. “When we've achieved
democracy, I'll tell you.”
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12/2/2017 Beauty & the beast | Prospect Magazine
https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/beautythebeast 1/5
HOME > MAGAZINE
Beauty & the beast
Western attacks on Burma's pro-democracy leader, Daw
Aung San Suu Kyi, merely assist the military regime
by John Jackson / August 20, 2001 / Leave a comment
Published in August 2001 issue of Prospect
Magazine
What impression would you get of Nelson Mandela from an
article which reported only the views of his opponents in
the ANC? The answer is obvious. Unfortunately for Burma’s
pro- democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (Daw Suu
henceforth), detention denies her the freedom to challenge
unfounded criticism of her leadership. The portrait painted
of Daw Suu in last month’s Prospect by Cathy Scott-Clark
and Adrian Levy must therefore be challenged by those
who can.
The rst thing to say is that Daw Suu has not courted the
admiration which she attracts from around the world. She
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hasn’t chosen personal su ering as a political strategy, as
Scott-Clark/Levy imply, she is just one of many for whom
personal su ering is a consequence of opposing military
rule in Burma.
Moreover, the article is based on a contradiction. It asserts
that on the one hand Daw Suu is too hardline, while on the
other, she’s too passive. Since her release in 1995, she has
been criticised for not mobilising a mass uprising against
the regime, and at the same time criticised for not being
conciliatory enough. Far from displaying strategic na?vety,
however, her policy of non-violent pressure has led to
dialogue with the regime whilst avoiding the break up of
Burma. Daw Suu accepts that the military will play a major
role in Burma’s transition years, and is willing to make
certain compromises. The goal of accountable government
is neither unrealistic nor immodest. We must now await the
outcome of the present talks.
Perhaps most damaging is Scott-Clark/Levy’s misleading
claim, based on conversations with a handful of Daw Suu’s
critics, that support for her in Burma has evaporated. They
talk about loss of backing within her party and among
Burma’s myriad ethnic groups. Minorities have good reason
to be wary of Rangoon politics. They have su ered the most
from Burman domination, civil war and the denial of human
rights. However, Daw Suu is probably the one politician
from the majority Burman ethnic group in whom they do
have a cautious faith. In March, the leadership of non-
Burman ethnic groups, including the Shan, Chin, Karen and
Karenni, made a declaration of support for dialogue
between Daw Suu and the military. They want talks which
include ethnic leaders, but are willing to accept an initial
con dence building process.
Another false claim is that Daw Suu is authoritarian because
her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), has
expelled members for speaking against party policy. This is

disingenuous. The two NLD MPs mentioned were expelled,
not simply for criticising party policy but for the way they
went about it. Instead of voicing concern at an internal
meeting, they wrote a ten-page report attacking the
leadership, and sent it to the junta. Given the regime’s
attempts to destroy the NLD through the use of spies and
agent provocateurs, it is amazing that the party deals with
disciplinary proceedings like any normal party in a
democratic state. The NLD is unlike many other resistance
movements, where the fate of “dissenters” has not been so
humane. The maintenance of democratic procedure in a
repressive state bodes well for Burma’s future.
Millions of people joined the NLD before the elections in
1990. It is true that thousands have since left. But to
suggest they have “just faded away” is doing the regime’s
work. Read the reports from Amnesty International, Human
Rights Watch, the UN Rapporteur for Burma-each and every
day NLD members are coerced and forced to resign. They
are threatened with arrest, sacked from public
employment, their businesses are closed down and they
can expect visits from the intelligence services in the dead
of night. For the last few years Burma’s newspapers, all
state run, have on a weekly basis published details of NLD
resignations. They say it is an indication of the NLD’s failings
rather than the regime’s repression. Scott-Clark/Levy seem
to agree.
Neither Daw Suu nor the NLD have insisted that all aid
should go through them, as Scott-Clark/Levy claim, and with
good reason. Any party in Burma found receiving foreign
money, regardless of its intended purposes, can be
disbanded and its leaders jailed.
The only thing worse than the inaccuracy of this piece is its
timing. At a moment when the pro-democracy movement
needs all the international support it can muster for talks
with the regime, the article can only undermine the

Asli Erdoğan on trial in Turkey: “They kept me in
solitary con nement”
Ismail Einashe / June 22, 2017
A writer, Erdoğan told Prospect the story of her arrest
and of her country’s...
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potential for such support in the west. The lives of over 45m
people depend on these talks succeeding. Unjustly
undermining the one person who can deliver a prospect of
peace is the last thing the Burmese people need.
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12/2/2017 Beauty and beast in Myanmar | daily-sun.com
http://www.daily-sun.com/arcprint/details/193673/Beauty-and-beast-in-Myanmar/2016-12-25 1/4
(./home/printnews/193673)
Opinion (printversion/type/opinion-print) / Beauty and beast in Myanmar
Beauty and beast in Myanmar
25 December, 2016 12:00 AM Share 0

top

Myanmar’s beauty is Aung San Suu Kyi and the beast is of course its military junta. In an article, published in daily Bangladesh Protidin (December 28, 2016),
Barrister Saidur Rahman informed, Suu Kyi was known as a beauty, while she was studying in England’s Oxford University.
This beauty, kept in captivity by military government of Myanmar for nearly 22 years as she spoke for democracy.
After all, due to protests of world community, the military government of Myanmar returned to civil rule and released Suu Kyi from captivity. The general
election was held and Suu Kyi’s party was voted to power by the people. The world treated her as an ambassador of peace and she got Nobel Peace Prize.

top

But the fact is that Suu Kyi could not free her completely from the influence of military junta.
However, the new constitution of Myanmar, dictated by the military rulers, debarred Suu Kyi to take official post of president but to remain an advisor, because
she previously married a foreigner, a British. But the beast of Myanmar could not rest in peace; they cracked down on Rohingya Muslims, who are settlers of
Arakan, now Rakhine Province of Myanmar, living there for centuries together.
The world now treat Aung San Suu Kyi as the beauty of democracy, watches her ability to subdue the beast in Myanmar army to solve the Rohingya problem.
The allegation is that a section of the persecuted Rohingyas has taken up arms against the government of Myanmar but that cannot be a logic for the
Myanmar army to kill, rape and drive away the innocent Rohingya men, women and children from there homeland which is a crime against humanity.
Suu Kyi faces an acid test weather she can came out successful as beauty of democracy or get lost to the beast of Myanmar army.
Md.Nasir ullahan Khan,
Fokirapool,Dhaka
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
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12/2/2017 Beauty and the Beast in Burma | by Timothy Garton Ash | The New York Review of Books
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2000/05/25/beauty-and-the-beast-in-burma/ 1/3
Beauty and the Beast in Burma
Timothy Garton Ash
MAY 25, 2000 ISSUE
This article is dedicated to the memory of Michael Aris.
First of all, there is this difficulty: to identify the people I talked with in Burma could send them
back to prison. The leaders of this grotesque army-state are officially titled, as in some schoolboy
version of Orwellian dystopia, “Secretary-1,” “Secretary-2,” “Secretary-3.” So in my notebook,
later smuggled out, I refer to their victims and my interlocutors as U-1, U-2, Daw-1, Daw-2, and
so on—“U” and “Daw” being, in Burmese, the respectful forms of “Mr.” and “Mrs.” In what I
write here, I must further disguise identities and omit telling detail, because, precisely, it will tell.
1.
“I’m a vegetarian,” says U-5. “I became a vegetarian after being in prison. You see—I’m sorry to
have to tell you this—we ate rats.” But how did they cook them? “We couldn’t. We just dried
them in the sun and ate them raw.” From the balcony of a good Chinese restaurant we look across
to the great royal fort of Mandalay, its broad moat shimmering in the twilight. A tourist’s delight.
U-5 tells me that the embankment of the moat was recently rebuilt by forced labor. His own
family was compelled to work on it. Earlier, from the top of Mandalay Hill, he pointed first to a
landmark that the tourist guides never mention: the large, semicircular prison where he, like
many others, spent years in solitary confinement for his part in the pro-democracy protests of
1988. The rat house.
U-13 describes the thick blue hood his interrogators put over his head. The hood was filthy with
the sweat, mucus, and blood of previous captives. He could scarcely breathe as the interrogators

12/2/2017 Beauty and the Beast in Burma | by Timothy Garton Ash | The New York Review of Books
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2000/05/25/beauty-and-the-beast-in-burma/ 2/3
T
attached electrodes to four points on his body. They charged the electrodes from a small,
primitive, hand-cranked generator. Each time he heard the cranking sound, he knew that another
electric shock was coming.
I find an everyday fear that is worse than in Ceausåüescu’s Romania. And desperate everyday
want. In poorer parts of the countryside, peasants ask each other, “Fingers or spoon?” “Fingers”
is better: it means you have enough solid rice in your bowl to eat with your fingers. “Spoon”
indicates a few grains of rice in a watery soup. Increasingly, the answer is “spoon.”
A hundred years ago, Burma exported more than two million tons of rice in a year. It was called
the rice basket of India. Forty years ago, it still exported one million tons. In 1999, the figure was
less than 70,000 tons. As the country’s exports of rice have declined, its illicit export of drugs has
soared. From being the rice basket of India, Burma has become the opium bowl of the world.
ales of misery and horror ten years after the citizens of Burma voted overwhelmingly, on May
27, 1990, for the National League for Democracy, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, and, in the large
swathes of the country inhabited by ethnic minorities, for other opposition parties. Denied what
they voted for,…
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12/2/2017 Beauty vs. the Beast: The Ongoing Battle for a True Democracy
https://www.irrawaddy.com/opinion/commentary/beauty-vs-beast-ongoing-battle-true-democracy.html 1/9
Commentary
Beauty vs. the Beast: The Ongoing Battle for
a True Democracy

By KYAW ZWA MOE 1 December 2017
Here in Myanmar, a game is being played by one woman and all of the generals. Some
call it “The Beauty vs. The Beast,” and it has been going on for almost 30 years.
In fact, it’s a longstanding battle between the people of Myanmar and military rule. The
woman, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, happens to have led this battle from dictatorship to
democracy with the mandate of the people, who resolutely voted for her party National
League for Democracy in landslide victories in both the 1990 and 2015 general
elections.
 For the past 30 years, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has battled with the country’s military generals.

This battle seemed totally impossible looking back at its start – the pro-democracy
uprising in 1988, when we students took to the streets facing troops and machine guns.
Pro-democracy activists fought military rule with their bare hands. And the military
clamped down. Activists bounced back and then were crushed again. This has been
the cycle of “revolution.”
Anyone who goes up against a concrete wall will be crushed. Among dissident families
in Myanmar, there is a common saying: “Your head will be crushed if you hit the
concrete wall.” And yes, countless heads were crushed.
Yet there has been clear progress thanks to those who sacrificed and their dedication.
It has been an evolution rather than a revolution over 30 years. And it’s not over yet.
The generals from dictator General Ne Win of an authoritarian regime to Snr-Gen Saw
Maung and his predecessor Snr-Gen Than Shwe of a military regime to Thein Sein, a
general-turned president for a so-called civilian regime, were unified against the
woman and her supporters who constitute the majority of Myanmar’s population of 54
million – a democratic force when taken as a whole.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and thousands of pro-democracy activists faced lengthy prison
sentences under the generals.
Today, 29 years later, the scenario is quite different. Instead of a political prisoner, she
has become the de facto leader of the democratic government. Hundreds of ex-
political prisoners are sitting lawmakers in parliament, and some hold executive
positions in central or regional governments. Civil society groups have more room to

strengthen society and the media is enjoying more press freedom after leaving behind
the draconian censorship of before.
But there is a radical change left to happen – to remove the military from the political
arena. This has been an impossible task from the beginning and it still proves to be so.
In past decades, the military held power by force. Today, the military holds power
thanks to the constitution. Drafted by the ex-junta in 2008, it protects the military’s
place in the political arena. The military protects the constitution.
Twenty-nine years later, the battle remains the same: the people vs. military rule. The
strategies and tactics have changed as the country’s political structure has changed
from absolute military rule to partial military control in sectors from executive to
legislative to economic.
Now, the NLD runs the country. But the reality is that while the NLD government is still
overwhelmed by the mechanisms of the old system, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is stunted
by former and current generals in day-to-day governing as well as long-term policy
planning.
With the fundamental political structure remaining to be fixed, issues ranging from the
nationwide ceasefire agreement to the Rakhine conflict to updating laws remain more
complicated than expected. And these critical issues, given the political situation, have
challenged the fledging democratic government.
These issues are unavoidable. And to fix these issues, an overhaul of the system and a
political transformation must continue.

But the question is whether the current military leadership will let this political
liberalization, which stated in 2011, go further. It all depends on their political will.
The political transformation to this point would not have happened without the
generals’ will – the transfer of power to a quasi-civilian government in 2011, the by-
election in 2012 that allowed Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her NLD members to contest,
and the free and fair election in 2015 that made the NLD a landslide victor and saw the
party assume power.
But it’s unlikely that the generals will allow Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and her government
to take further steps to amend the constitution of implement a new one – which has
been a stated goal of the party since before the 2015 election.
In today’s state-run newspapers, the NLD-government announced its national
objectives for the 2018, 70th Anniversary of Independence Day. One of the main
objectives is “to strive hard to draw up a constitution suitable for the Union in
accordance with democratic principles and norms for the emergence of a Democratic
Federal Union.”
It is another hurdle in the unﬁnished battle between the military and the NLD
government going forward.
To read the generals’ minds, they will be tolerant if this political transformation
continues to take place within the framework of their 2008 constitution, which
guarantees them executive and legislative privileges, plus full autonomy on security
matters.
The military leadership seems intolerant to accept any further structural changes that
will undermine their role in political arena.

To make it happen, they will need some convincing. Thus, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has
emphasized national reconciliation, especially between her government and the
military, to build trust with the generals. But for that, there is no formula.
For her as de facto leader, playing the game with both current and former generals is
the art of politics.
Topics: Military, Politics
Kyaw Zwa Moe
The Irrawaddy
Kyaw Zwa Moe is the Editor of the English edition of The Irrawaddy.
Burma
Gold Mine Operator Demands Fairer
Payments to State, Reopening of Mine

12/2/2017 Beauty Vs. Beast
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Beauty Vs. Beast
By KYAW ZWA MOE Friday, June 18, 2010
It's not a happy birthday.
Why? Because the battle between the state of Burma and Aung
San Suu Kyi goes on. On Saturday, Suu Kyi will celebrate her
65th birthday alone except for two caretakers who share her
lakeside home in Rangoon, where she has celebrated solo
birthdays for 15 of the past 21 years in which she's been under
house arrest.
This is a beauty vs. the beast battle, borrowing the words of
British historian and author Timothy Garton Ash, who wrote a
popular story, Beauty and the Beast in Burma.
More Articles in This Section
Sizing Up an Icon
Fighting Corruption Begins at Home
Future of Exiled Burmese Media
How Much Freedom Does Burmese Media Enjoy?
Five Days in Burma
Turning Burma into Next Asian Tiger No Simple Task
With Suu Kyi On Board, Is Burma Finally Moving Toward
Real Change?
The ‘Rule of Law’ in Burma
New Doors are Opening in Burma
A Good Beginning to the New Year

Kyaw Zwa Moe is
managing editor of the
Irrawaddy magazine. He
can be reached at
kyawzwa@irrawaddy.org.
TEXT SIZESuu Kyi has been the victim of
character assassination
numerous times in the past 20 years. Physically, she was
attacked by the ruling generals' thugs when her car was
mobbed in 1996 in Rangoon and again, more publicly,
when her motorcade was ambushed in Depayin in Upper
Burma in 2003. She is regularly attacked by the regime's
media and junta-back groups like the Union Solidarity and
Development Association.
Although the regime regularly creates new schemes and
plots to smear her image, she has survived and never lost
the support of the people.
In fact, Suu Kyi and Burmese politics have been like the
two faces of a coin ever since she entered the country's
political arena during the nationwide pro-democracy
uprising in 1988. But the question is, for how much longer will she be under house arrest
and ignored by the regime's leaders?
The problem between Suu Kyi and the junta is complicated. Since '88, it's really come
down to the relationships between three players: the military government and Suu Kyi, as
the opposition leader, with the international community as moderator.
Let's look at the two key players—Suu Kyi and the regime, whose policies and style can be
compared and contrasted in four areas.
First, Suu Kyi:
Ideology: liberal Western democracy
Ethics: plain honesty practiced as political integrity
Force: National League for Democracy, the winner of the 1990 elections, now disbanded
Methodology: dialogue (through non-violence)
Now, the Junta:
Ideology: disciplined democracy (opposed to liberal Western democracy)
Ethics: cunning, manipulation and oppression
Force: more than 400,000 soldiers
Methodology: “democracy roadmap” with seven steps (the upcoming election: step five)
So far, Suu Kyi has been unsuccessful in persuading the generals to join her in
reconciliation talks, a point stressed over and over again by members of the international
community. Everyone from the United States to neighboring counties to the UN have been
trying to bring Suu Kyi and the generals to the table. In short, all efforts have failed.
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Some critics say that the opposition movement has failed because of Suu Kyi's inflexibility
and a lack of political strategy. A decade ago, British author Ash, in his story, compared
Suu Kyi with Vaclav Havel, another Nobel Peace Prize winner, who nominated Suu Kyi for
the same prize. Ash recalled: “Talking to him in the 1980s, I always had a strong sense of a
political strategy. I did not have this impression with her. She has a firm grasp of which
political systems Burma needs; a much less clear idea of how to achieve it.”
On a level, fair playing field, Suu Kyi and the opposition would clearly come out winners.
Suu Kyi still has wide respect from the majority of the Burmese people. In Burma, there
are not many leaders who have won the hearts of the people. But among them are Suu
Kyi's father, Aung San, who won independence from the British in 1948, and Suu Kyi
herself, the leader of what she calls “Burma's second struggle for independence.”
However, on March 29, the NLD, following Suu Kyi's decision, voted not to register as a
political party to contest the junta's upcoming election this year. In reality, honesty and
political integrity can't defeat the cunning, manipulation and oppression of the generals in
Burma today. Recognizing its failure, the NLD officially apologized in a public letter for its
“unsuccessful struggle for democracy” over a 20-year period.
In spite of the party's failure, Suu Kyi is still the person the generals fear most.
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Garrett Wrote: 23/06/2010
Beauty Vs Beast is good description of Burma, as well as a good
description of those who post comments in these articles.
Aung San Suu Kyi represents the beauty of Burma's green
countrysides, hope for unity among Burma's many ethnicities,
the defenders of the principle that good will overcome evil, &
that the yoke of tyranny will be removed from the shoulders of
the Burmese people someday.
The SPDC, its forces of evil, & those who defend it, represent
the beast in the hearts of the Burmese people who allow greed
and elevation of their own standing to blind them to the
suffering of others, to the ugliness of the devastated forests, to
the burned-out schools, churches, & homes of the persecuted.
The beast lives in the black holes where their hearts once were
as they allow human sacrifice & enslavement in order to
appease the Gods of War they support with their apathy & their
sons who become the beastly monks of the SPDC religion, the
unholy trinity of greed, revenge, & persecution.
phung Gan Wrote: 21/06/2010
So what makes you all in this forum different? You all are the
same wolves, the fact that you all are Burmans, that fact that
you all have taken away all natural resources from ethnic
territories and done nothing for them, fact that you all have the
same intention to Burmanize all ethnic nationalities.

KHS Wrote: 21/06/2010
Sounds like you never had a happy birthday. You do not even
have guts like her and try to criticize what you don't have.
I know you want to call "disciplined democracy" if only
minority making money for their own families and relatives,
not for people. Think about who has gun and power to do
things freely before going too far saying "defeat the beast"?
Wasting my time reading your article.
plan B Wrote: 21/06/2010
Ko Kyaw Zwa Moe:
Your respect and affection for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and your
hatred for SPDC has driven your view that SPDC is not a simple
misguided beast.
If you think there is a princely character underneath that ugly
appearance that projected so well for the past 40 years you will
be absolutely wrong. No one act of redemption is going to
transform this entity into a responsible government.
The beauty, that you have implied to be in Daw Aung San Suu
Kyi is similarly and dangerously flawed.
How so? Her advocacy has undermined her innocence even
though her laudable non violence idea remain pure.
The danger in describing her as this entity:
1) Will undermine any different effort by any other entities that

counter to her's as not immediately suitable. Judge from the
"Junta stooges" being called prove this well.
2) Focus will eternally be on the "Beauty" instead of the people.
SPDC is worse than "The Beast" must be reckon with
differently. Daw Suu as a beauty should be released imediately.
Dr.Myo.THI-HA Wrote: 20/06/2010
To Ko Kyaw Zwa Moe:
Based on Suu Kyi and Junta performance,
both of them are "Devil woman Vs. Beast" for 60M of all
Myanmar people.
First, Suu Kyi:
Ideology: Confused among Western democracy, British
Royality and Europe' socialism.
Ethics: Communism & Anti buddhistsm (around 1990, she
clearly speeched as "Moddha" in stead of "Buddha") practiced
as political integrity. (she doesn't believe in any Gods; Buddha,
Jesus, Alha and etc..)
Force: NLD party, now disbanded by her own decision (before
CEC made the decision & without listening the other political
prisonners from jails)
Methodology: dialogue with very agressive confrontation.
(Note: S. Africa Nelson Mendela was successful due to the co
operation with president D.B at that time)
Now, the Junta:

Ideology: Military minded democracy (some actions close to
Taliban's way)
Ethics: per head per human (under military boots)
Force: over 400,000 soldiers + USDA + YCDC/MCDC
Methodology: Just for their own survivals
Myanmar Parriot 4 UMPF Wrote: 20/06/2010
Be careful in using Beauty and the Beast.
In the end Beauty fell in love with the Beast.
Watch the fairy tale again.
Zam Mang Wrote: 19/06/2010
Than Shwe is the beast. Kyaing Kyaing is the beast. Thandar
Shwe is the beast.
Well! When we see the faces of this family, we are terrified. But
when we see the face of Suu Kyi, we see freedom. Suu Kyi is
seen by the Karens, by the Kachins, by the Shans, by the Chins,
by the Rakhines, by the Mons, by the Kayahs and even by the
Burmans as liberator from cruel dictatorship.
I am a Chin. I am not related with Suu Kyi by blood but Suu Kyi
is my hero. She spends decades cruel treatment but she is
always my hero, not Than Shwe.
A.M.O Wrote: 19/06/2010

This article should be interpreted in certain areas, in such a
manner so that a layman can understand:
the Junta: Ideology: disciplined democracy(sic. mine is
democracy-at-gunpoint)
Ethics: don't-argue-with-me-or-I'll-shoot
Force: handful of corrupt army generals who are gays(totally
disconnected from 400 thousand troops)
Methodology: Gun-law, Gun-politics, Gun-election
Add-On: Mao's motto- "Power grows from the barrel of a gun"
I am sorry Ko Kyaw Zwa Moe:
"The problem between Suu Kyi and the junta is complicated.
Since '88, it's really come down to the relationships between
three players: the military government and Suu Kyi, as the
opposition leader, with the international community as
moderator."
I absolutely disagree with your whitewashing of the
international community's responsibility.
No wonder this intolerable present policy is continuing without
any abatement.
Ko Kyaw Zwa Moe: When will Irrawaddy stop protecting the
west (international community) cause of Myanmar people
sufferings.
I am quite sure Soros will not be offended by pointing out the

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Saturday, December 02, 2017 BURMESE VERSION| VIDEO
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Beauty Vs. Beast
By KYAW ZWA MOE Friday, June 18, 2010
(Page 2 of 2)
The former prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, wrote
in his book From Third World to First: “They [the generals]
could not lock her up forever; she would be a continuing
embarrassment to their government.”
That's true. But for now, it's her 65th birthday, and she's still
locked up and still haunting the generals' every move. She has
the power of political integrity, dedication and righteousness.
But that's not enough to defeat the beast.
More Articles in This Section
Sizing Up an Icon
Fighting Corruption Begins at Home
Future of Exiled Burmese Media
How Much Freedom Does Burmese Media Enjoy?
Five Days in Burma
Turning Burma into Next Asian Tiger No Simple Task
With Suu Kyi On Board, Is Burma Finally Moving Toward
Real Change?
The ‘Rule of Law’ in Burma
New Doors are Opening in Burma
A Good Beginning to the New Year

TEXT SIZE
1 | 2 |
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Garrett Wrote: 23/06/2010
Beauty Vs Beast is good description of Burma, as well as a good
description of those who post comments in these articles.
Aung San Suu Kyi represents the beauty of Burma's green
countrysides, hope for unity among Burma's many ethnicities,
the defenders of the principle that good will overcome evil, &
that the yoke of tyranny will be removed from the shoulders of
the Burmese people someday.
The SPDC, its forces of evil, & those who defend it, represent
Thailand Hotels
Bangkok Hotels
China Hotels
India Hotels

the beast in the hearts of the Burmese people who allow greed
and elevation of their own standing to blind them to the
suffering of others, to the ugliness of the devastated forests, to
the burned-out schools, churches, & homes of the persecuted.
The beast lives in the black holes where their hearts once were
as they allow human sacrifice & enslavement in order to
appease the Gods of War they support with their apathy & their
sons who become the beastly monks of the SPDC religion, the
unholy trinity of greed, revenge, & persecution.
phung Gan Wrote: 21/06/2010
So what makes you all in this forum different? You all are the
same wolves, the fact that you all are Burmans, that fact that
you all have taken away all natural resources from ethnic
territories and done nothing for them, fact that you all have the
same intention to Burmanize all ethnic nationalities.
KHS Wrote: 21/06/2010
Sounds like you never had a happy birthday. You do not even
have guts like her and try to criticize what you don't have.
I know you want to call "disciplined democracy" if only
minority making money for their own families and relatives,
not for people. Think about who has gun and power to do
things freely before going too far saying "defeat the beast"?
Wasting my time reading your article.
Ko Kyaw Zwa Moe:

Your respect and affection for Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and your
hatred for SPDC has driven your view that SPDC is not a simple
misguided beast.
If you think there is a princely character underneath that ugly
appearance that projected so well for the past 40 years you will
be absolutely wrong. No one act of redemption is going to
transform this entity into a responsible government.
The beauty, that you have implied to be in Daw Aung San Suu
Kyi is similarly and dangerously flawed.
How so? Her advocacy has undermined her innocence even
though her laudable non violence idea remain pure.
The danger in describing her as this entity:
1) Will undermine any different effort by any other entities that
counter to her's as not immediately suitable. Judge from the
"Junta stooges" being called prove this well.
2) Focus will eternally be on the "Beauty" instead of the people.
SPDC is worse than "The Beast" must be reckon with
differently. Daw Suu as a beauty should be released imediately.
Dr.Myo.THI-HA Wrote: 20/06/2010
To Ko Kyaw Zwa Moe:
Based on Suu Kyi and Junta performance,
both of them are "Devil woman Vs. Beast" for 60M of all
Myanmar people.
First, Suu Kyi:

Ideology: Confused among Western democracy, British
Royality and Europe' socialism.
Ethics: Communism & Anti buddhistsm (around 1990, she
clearly speeched as "Moddha" in stead of "Buddha") practiced
as political integrity. (she doesn't believe in any Gods; Buddha,
Jesus, Alha and etc..)
Force: NLD party, now disbanded by her own decision (before
CEC made the decision & without listening the other political
prisonners from jails)
Methodology: dialogue with very agressive confrontation.
(Note: S. Africa Nelson Mendela was successful due to the co
operation with president D.B at that time)
Now, the Junta:
Ideology: Military minded democracy (some actions close to
Taliban's way)
Ethics: per head per human (under military boots)
Force: over 400,000 soldiers + USDA + YCDC/MCDC
Methodology: Just for their own survivals
Myanmar Parriot 4 UMPF Wrote: 20/06/2010
Be careful in using Beauty and the Beast.
In the end Beauty fell in love with the Beast.
Watch the fairy tale again.

Zam Mang Wrote: 19/06/2010
Than Shwe is the beast. Kyaing Kyaing is the beast. Thandar
Shwe is the beast.
Well! When we see the faces of this family, we are terrified. But
when we see the face of Suu Kyi, we see freedom. Suu Kyi is
seen by the Karens, by the Kachins, by the Shans, by the Chins,
by the Rakhines, by the Mons, by the Kayahs and even by the
Burmans as liberator from cruel dictatorship.
I am a Chin. I am not related with Suu Kyi by blood but Suu Kyi
is my hero. She spends decades cruel treatment but she is
always my hero, not Than Shwe.
A.M.O Wrote: 19/06/2010
This article should be interpreted in certain areas, in such a
manner so that a layman can understand:
the Junta: Ideology: disciplined democracy(sic. mine is
democracy-at-gunpoint)
Ethics: don't-argue-with-me-or-I'll-shoot
Force: handful of corrupt army generals who are gays(totally
disconnected from 400 thousand troops)
Methodology: Gun-law, Gun-politics, Gun-election
Add-On: Mao's motto- "Power grows from the barrel of a gun"
I am sorry Ko Kyaw Zwa Moe:

"The problem between Suu Kyi and the junta is complicated.
Since '88, it's really come down to the relationships between
three players: the military government and Suu Kyi, as the
opposition leader, with the international community as
moderator."
I absolutely disagree with your whitewashing of the
international community's responsibility.
No wonder this intolerable present policy is continuing without
any abatement.
Ko Kyaw Zwa Moe: When will Irrawaddy stop protecting the
west (international community) cause of Myanmar people
sufferings.
I am quite sure Soros will not be offended by pointing out the
most responsible party:
the USA.
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12/2/2017 'Choices for an Uncrowned Queen' | by Timothy Garton Ash | The New York Review of Books
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2013/06/06/burma-choices-uncrowned-queen/ 1/10
‘Choices for an Uncrowned Queen’
Timothy Garton Ash
JUNE 6, 2013 ISSUE
The Roadmap
by Suragamika
Chiang Mai: Silkworm, 120 pp., $18.50 (paper)
Bones Will Crow: 15 Contemporary Burmese Poets
edited and translated from the Burmese by Ko Ko Thett and James Byrne
Northern Illinois University Press, 172 pp., $18.95 (paper)
Rangoon
It’s good to be back. I was last here thirteen years ago, at the turn of the century. I spoke about
transitions to democracy at the headquarters of the National League for Democracy (NLD), with
Aung San Suu Kyi in the chair. I wrote about the trip for The New York Review, in a piece of
analytical reportage entitled “Beauty and the Beast in Burma.” Then the military regime put me
on its visa blacklist. I can say this with unusual certainty because last summer the office of
Burma’s reformist president, Thein Sein, rather unexpectedly published a list of some two
thousand people who were no longer banned from entering the country. It contained some
gloriously unspecific entries such as “239. David” and “859. Mr Nick,” but there I recognizably
was: “285. Gartonish, Timothy John.”
So now I can meet again, and write about, some of the brave writers, editors, and journalists
whom I could then only call Daw-1 or U-2. There is, for example, Ma Thida, a medical doctor
1

Khin Maung Win/AP Images
Aung San Suu Kyi standing in front of a painting of her father, General Aung San,
Rangoon, October 2011
and writer who was then only just out of
prison, where she had spent, as she told me,
“five years, six months, and six days.” In a
deeply moving conversation back in 2000, she
described how she had survived the harsh
conditions of a Burmese prison with the help
of intensive Buddhist meditation. She told me
that on February 26, 1996, at about 10:00 PM,
“I found enlightenment.” At her next
interrogation she thanked her jailers, saying:
“You have helped me to nirvana!”
Ma Thida subsequently published an account
of her experiences, The Roadmap, though only
under a pseudonym, Suragamika (Brave
Traveler), and labeled as “documentary
fiction.” Now she sits beside me on a platform
at the Irrawaddy Literary Festival—the first
literary festival ever to be held in this country
—and talks about the duty of writers and
journalists as “witnesses to violence.” She is
elegantly dressed, busy, pausing only to check
messages on a smartphone plucked from a
large handbag. If you did not know her story, you would never guess that here is a woman who
has come through hell to nirvana—and beyond. Later, she invites me downtown, to the busy
offices of her new magazine, The Myanmar Independent, one of tens if not hundreds of
publications that are now jostling for position in the unaccustomed light of press freedom—and
in the monsoon of commercial competition.
There are others who were not so strong or fortunate. The festival organizers have gone to great
lengths to attract not just international stars, such as Vikram Seth and Jung Chang, but also some

T
eighty local writers. An older writer, imprisoned for twelve years, tells how his long incarceration
wrecked his marriage and his relationship with his children. As we move on to celebrate this
emerging new Burma, we must remember the pain that cannot be undone, wrongs that can never
be righted, lives ruined.
Thirteen years ago, editors of tiny magazines in dim, cramped offices showed me examples of the
crudest precensorship by the authorities: individual phrases or whole pages had to be blanked out,
or hastily replaced with advertisements. This was the age of the hidden message, of the Aesopian,
with even an article on the proliferation of mosquitoes in Rangoon banned by the censors as
suspected allegory. Sometimes, editors got away with little triumphs, like the November 2010
First Eleven magazine headline, in this soccer-mad country: “SUNDERLAND FREEZE
CHELSEA UNITED STUNNED BY VILLA & ARSENAL ADVANCE TO GRAB THEIR
HOPE.” First Eleven submitted this to the censors in black and white, but published it in multiple
colors. The letters in bright red spelled out “SU…FREE…UNITE…&…ADVANCE TO GRAB
THE HOPE….” Su—that is Aung San Suu Kyi—had just been released from house arrest. The
captain was back.
Then, on August 20 last year, censorship was abolished. To be strictly accurate, precensorship
was abolished, since copies still had to be submitted after publication. Shortly before I arrived, a
notice in the New Light of Myanmar, once the military junta’s very own Pravda, announced that
the Press Security and Registration Division, “which censored the publications in Myanmar,” has
been dissolved but—hang on a minute—a Copyright and Registration Division will be formed
under the Information and Public Relations Department. From censorship to PR.
here are now at least three large questions facing the writers, journalists, publishers, artists, and
politicians of Burma—as well as the thousands of more or less well-intentioned outsiders who are
now pouring into the country to offer assistance or make money. The first is: Have censorship
and military-political control of the public sphere, including covert control through media
ownership, really gone? If so, and to secure that change, what new structures of law and
regulation should replace them? Ma Thida explained to me the practical difficulties of getting a
license to run a magazine, and the way in which cronies of the military may dominate the market.

Pe Myint, a veteran writer and magazine editor, is working on a draft media code of ethics. His
visiting card says: Member, Interim Myanmar Press Council, Yangon, Myanmar. (Burma or
Myanmar? Rangoon or Yangon? There is now total confusion about which term the friendly
foreigner should use.) Many of the important decisions will have to be made within the existing,
still far-from-democratic power structures. The NLD will not have the chance of forming a
government until after a general election scheduled for 2015.
For the online world, the country’s Electronic Transactions Law—which, for example, makes
distributing or receiving information relating to “national culture” punishable by seven to fifteen
years in prison—needs to be drastically overhauled. Reformist ministers in the post-military
government in the new capital of Naypyidaw (aka Nay Pyi Taw) seem anxious to do the right
thing, learning from the experience of free countries. But behind them, in the wings, are hard men
and interests who don’t want free speech if they can possibly avoid it. The Ministry of
Information recently released a retrograde draft bill to license and control publications,
prompting an outcry in the newly free press.
Moreover, the country’s Asian neighborhood offers a plethora of different models: from Thailand
to Singapore and from China to India. Numerous official and nongovernmental advisers may
arrive from the West, but it is by no means self-evident that the United States’ First Amendment
tradition, or European-style regulation of free speech, adjudicated for forty-seven countries by the
European Court of Human Rights, will immediately spring to Burmese minds. There is, needless
to say, no Asian Court of Human Rights to set the minimum standards of freedom of expression
for half of humankind.
The second question is familiar wherever writers emerge from decades of censorship and
oppression: “Help! What am I going to write about now?” Now you have to do more than just
smuggle your subversive message past the censors. Reading Bones Will Crow, an excellent
anthology of modern Burmese poetry, I can see—or perhaps more accurately, sense, because the
“lost in translation” problem is especially acute with a wholly unfamiliar language and literary
tradition—that there was some good writing there, in what the poet Tin Moe called “The Years
2

We Didn’t See the Dawn.” But clearly much of the electricity came from the confrontation with
an oppressive regime.
Thirdly, there is the challenge for Burmese (of all ethnicities) to work out what they think should
be the proper limits of free speech, not just in laws and regulation from above, but also in
editorial and social practice. As everywhere, the greatest opportunity and the greatest challenge is
the Internet. While Internet penetration in Burma has been low—an estimated 1 percent in 2011
—it is soaring. Nine Nine Sanay, apparently the most-followed Burmese writer on Facebook, had
106,000 Likes when I last looked.
One of the poets represented in Bones Will Crow delights in the name of Pandora. When I met her
at the festival—a spirited, decisive young woman, smartphone always in hand—she gave me her
card. It has no postal address or landline, but lists her blog on blogspot .com, her Facebook page
(where she comes up as “Pandora blogpoet”), her Twitter account, her cell phone number, and her
Gmail address. She started blogging in 2007, and found real artistic and personal freedom online.
“Facebook for me is another country,” she told me. “I have another life in another country.”
Anyone who doubts the liberating potential of the online world should listen to Pandora.
But Pandora’s electronic box also releases evils on the world. In the Burmese case, this became
manifest in a torrent of online hate speech directed against the Muslim Rohingya minority in the
state of Rakhine (aka Arakan). There was, for example, a Facebook page called “Kalar
Beheading Gang”—“Kalar” being a derogatory term for South Asian Muslims. Facebook has
now deleted it, but how many fluent Burmese-speakers does it have to enforce its worldwide
community standards? Facebook depends on users reporting such content, but what if they don’t?
Causal connections between hate speech and actual violence are difficult to establish, and often
asserted too loosely. But two things are clear: there was a wave of online hate speech, including
some crude incitement to violence, and there was appalling inter-communal violence in Rakhine
state. As usual in such cases, there was violence on both sides, but mainly there were forays to
kill, beat up, or ethnically cleanse Rohingya Muslims, carried out by the poor and embattled
majority Rakhine Buddhists—despite their Buddha’s teaching that they should not hurt a fly. The
Economist reported last November that “satellite imagery shows the utter destruction of a Muslim

quarter of the coastal town of Kyaukphyu, from where oil-and-gas pipelines are to cross
Myanmar to China.”
Choices for an Uncrowned Queen
The same issue of The Economist had an editorial gently chiding Aung San Suu Kyi for not
speaking out more clearly to condemn and attempt to stop the violence. Such reluctance is
especially striking in someone whose dissident writings from her long period of house arrest
contain decided reflections on the political as well as moral imperative of sustaining nonviolence.
In two interviews for the BBC, one last November and one recorded last December for the Desert
Island Discs program, she tiptoed around the issue as cautiously as any ordinary politician. In the
former interview, after saying briefly that “human rights…belong to every individual human
being,” she moved on rapidly to highlight the unclarified citizenship status of the Rohingya. And
she said, “I won’t speak out because I don’t think it would help the situation.” On Desert Island
Discs, she said that “violence has been committed by both sides,” and then explained her position
a little more: “If I were to take sides, it would create more animosity.”
Perhaps this is true. I did not get any chance to explore the question with her on this visit. But I
am painfully struck by the fact that almost everyone I talk to about it—including some in a good
position to know—judge that the underlying reason for her cautiousness is politics, in a more
workaday sense. There are no votes to be gained on the issue—indeed, there are only votes to be
lost—among the ethnic Burman majority. And she will need all the Burman votes she can get in
the 2015 parliamentary elections, as well as forming alliances with ethnic minority parties and at
least part of the military—whose parliamentary appointees will still have a reserved 25 percent of
seats—if she is to get the more than 75 percent vote in the lower house needed to change the
constitution, so that the new parliament can elect her president. “I would like to be president,”
she told her interviewer on Desert Island Discs. And she means an American-style executive
president, not just a ceremonial head of state: “You should want to get government power in your
hands.”
If Thailand has a half-deified king, Burma has in her its uncrowned queen. Indeed, her brief
appearance at the literary festival reminded me of a visit by Britain’s queen, with everyone

O
Aung San Suu Kyi; drawing by John Springs
crowding around awestruck, laughing at the slightest quip, and
wearing involuntary smiles on their faces. (Me, too.) She is regal,
working a room with dignity, professionalism, and charm, but the
hard political reality still rests in that adjective “uncrowned.” Her
nimbus and charisma derive partly from the hereditary principle—
never for a moment does she or anyone else in Burma forget that she
is the daughter of this postcolonial country’s founding hero, General
Aung San—and partly from her own extraordinary life story,
courage, presence, wit, and beauty.
Her popularity, however, is not yet anchored in any constitutional
position. Quite the reverse: Article 59(f) of the country’s 2008
constitution—written by the military—bars from the presidency
anyone whose “spouse, [or] one of the legitimate children of their
spouses…owe allegiance to a foreign power.” Suu Kyi’s late
husband, Michael Aris, an Oxford colleague and friend of mine, was
British, and their children Alexander and Kim—second and third on
the country’s former blacklist—therefore have British citizenship. That is an article she needs to
change; and to do so, according to that same constitution, you need the votes of more than 75
percent of all members of the lower house, and then those “of more than half of those who are
eligible to vote” in a nationwide referendum (i.e., including the ethnic minorities). Guess who the
generals were trying to stop.
n the stage of the Inya Lake Hotel where the Irrawaddy festival is held, just across the lake
from the family home where she spent all those heroic years under house arrest, Suu Kyi talks
easily and charmingly to an adoring audience about the books she likes best: George Eliot, Victor
Hugo, and, yes, detective stories. Detective stories are very useful, she quips, in her current work
in politics: they help you figure out “what people’s motives are.” And we all laugh, entranced.
I am irresistibly reminded of the halcyon days after Václav Havel became president of
Czechoslovakia in 1990. There is the same mix of fairy-tale charm, public adulation at home and

abroad, and a nagging murmur of private unease. The unease, in her case as in his, flows from
several different sources—including the unhappiness of local intellectuals who barely get a look
in. But mainly it is about the dissonance between the moral-literary-spiritual antipolitician of
yesterday and the practical politician of tomorrow.
For and around such exceptional figures, in such exceptional moments, there are then two
questions. The first is how they themselves understand and present their own role; the second is
how others write and speak about them. As I pointed out several times in essays for The New
York Review in the 1990s, the playwright-turned-president Havel always insisted that he could be
both at once: intellectual and politician. Asked very early in his presidency if dissidents-turned-
politicians could continue to “live in truth” he replied, “Either yes or no. If it proves not, I
certainly won’t go on being one.” But he did—for another thirteen years, until he finally retired
from the presidency of the Czech Republic in 2003, having successfully disproved his own
original claim.
However, he then went on to demonstrate something else on which he had always insisted—that,
even after all those years of being a politician, he could go back to being a playwright. Still
dissident in spirit, he wrote one last, sharp, amusing play, Leaving, about the addiction to power
and the difficulty of giving it up.
The uncrowned king of Bohemia’s position in 1990 was in so many respects easier than that of
the uncrowned queen of Burma today. He was already president. That presidency did not make
him responsible for most aspects of governing the country, including the economy. Havel himself
had always, even as a professed antipolitician, shown considerable political skills. His country
was close to the prosperous, dynamic European Community (soon to be European Union) and,
though badly run-down, was in incomparably better shape than Burma today. Yes,
Czechoslovakia would soon break apart, but peacefully and only into two quite well-defined parts
—today’s Czech Republic and Slovakia.
She, by contrast, is not yet president. It will take some three years of politics, with lots of
compromises, before she gets to Naypyidaw’s equivalent of Prague Castle, as she is plainly
determined to do. Whether you look at the economy, health care, education, or any other measure

Y
of human development, her country is in a dreadful state, after decades of being isolated and
exploited by its military rulers. Her own political nous has not been so evident as Havel’s in the
opposition years, and the NLD lacks the expertise necessary to govern. Burma is not an Asian
Czechoslovakia but more like an Asian Yugoslavia, an ethnic patchwork that can only be kept
together by timely and far-reaching devolution of power. (Ironically enough, another of the
favorite books she mentioned at the literary festival was Rebecca West’s Black Lamb and Grey
Falcon, which explores pre-1939 Yugoslavia.)
On the other hand, she seems clear-sighted about what she has to do. “I’ve never had illusions
about politics,” she told one of her BBC interviewers. No Havelesque visions there; and that’s an
advantage. In my experience, the ex-dissidents who do best in post-dictatorship politics are those
who say in effect, “OK, back then I was an intellectual, now I am a politician. One day I may go
back to being an intellectual again, but for now I’ll do my best at playing a reasonably clean
game of politics. For these are different games with different rules.”
et the perhaps necessary compromises are painful to watch. Since I left Burma, Suu Kyi has
chaired a parliamentary commission which decided that a copper mine jointly owned by the
Burmese military and the Chinese arms manufacturer Norinco can continue to operate, despite
popular protests against evictions of local farmers. While terrible anti-Muslim pogroms have
spread to other parts of Burma, she has pursued a rapprochement with the military, sitting in the
front row at a march-past on Armed Forces Day, next to the top brass. She did not look
comfortable.
This brings us to those, both inside the country and abroad, who write and speak about her.
Maybe she is prepared to give up being a saint, but are they—are we—prepared to let her drop
the halo? I notice in a weekly newspaper, The Myanmar Times, a piece about Burmese
journalists’ reluctance to report critically on Suu Kyi and the NLD, from which some disaffected
factions have already broken away. So whereas in Thailand criticism of the king is strangled by
draconian lèse-majesté laws, here criticism of the queen is held back by a velvet ribbon of self-
censorship—plus the fear of adverse reactions from readers. (“How dare you criticize our

1
2
queen?”) That is not universal, but there is generally a gap between the critical comments one
hears in private and what people will write or say in public.
If I were a Burmese political activist and wanted the best for my country, I would self-censor too.
After all, other political forces in Burma, including some from the still-dominant military and ex-
military, would like nothing more than to see Suu Kyi’s supporters fall apart, squabbling over the
spoils of power that they do not yet even possess. Unity is strength, and the democratic forces in
Burma need all the unity they can achieve so as to keep this country together, win that landslide
election victory in 2015, prepare for government, and make Suu Kyi president—which she must
be. If I were a Western politician or diplomat, I might make that same tactical call. But this
cannot be the right choice for a journalist, scholar, or political writer.
To be durably and fully free, a country, be it Burma, Thailand, India, or the United States, also
needs writers who see it as their role to dig out the facts, get at the truth as best they can, and then
portray that truth as honestly, fairly, clearly, and vividly as possible. And those in power, be they
crowned kings, uncrowned queens, or mere presidents and prime ministers, need such fact-
grubbers and truth-tellers too. This is not, I hasten to add, necessarily a nobler task than the
politician’s, nor always more difficult, but it is a vital complement to the role that Aung San Suu
Kyi has now chosen. Our job is to tell it as it is.
—This is the third of three articles on free speech in South and Southeast Asia.
May 25, 2000. ↩
See my earlier articles, “India: Watch What You Say,” The New York Review, April 25, 2013, and “Insult the King and…Go Directly to Jail,” The New York Review, May 23, 2013. ↩
© 1963-2017 NYREV, Inc. All rights reserved.

12/2/2017 Emma Larkin: The Force of a Woman | New Republic
https://newrepublic.com/article/103083/lady-peacock-aung-san-suu-kyi 1/10
The Force of a Woman
BY EMMA LARKIN
May 4, 2012

The Lady and the Peacock: The Life of Aung San Suu Kyi
By Peter Popham
(The Experiment, 448 pp., $27.50)
Aung San Suu Kyi mania is sweeping Rangoon. The paraphernalia for sale on the streets of Rangoon
now includes the hitherto banned image of Aung San Suu Kyi on posters, stickers, key rings, and
baseball caps. At one store, staff are hurriedly screen-printing new t-shirts with line drawings of her
face while hundreds of freshly stamped flags bearing the peacock and star logo of her party, the
National League for Democracy (NLD), are being hung up to dry—the shop owner is expecting a rush
on sales after the NLD’s landslide victory in Burma’s by-elections earlier this month. The party won
forty-three out of the forty-four seats it contested, and even snatched up all four seats available in the
new capital and government stronghold of Naypyitaw. It was a staggering victory, and most people I
spoke to in Rangoon attributed it to the powerful allure of the party’s world-famous chairperson, Aung
San Suu Kyi.
There are many extraordinary things about the life of Aung San Suu Kyi, and one of the most
extraordinary among them is that her popularity within Burma has endured despite every attempt by
the Burmese military dictatorship to silence and marginalize her over the past two decades. Also no less
extraordinary is that her involvement in Burma’s politics happened through a fluke of timing. Aung San
Suu Kyi left Burma as a teenager and ended up living in Oxford with her British husband and their two
young sons. She is remembered there as a dutiful housewife who produced home-cooked meals every
day, ironed her husband’s socks, and sewed her own curtains and clothes. Then, one evening in March
1988, as she and her husband sat on their sofa reading, a phone call came that would alter her life

irrevocably. Her mother, who lived in Rangoon, in faraway Burma, had suffered a stroke. Aung San Suu
Kyi left for Burma the next day. Little did she know that she might never return to her home in
England.
For Burma, 1988 was a pivotal year. Aung San Suu Kyi arrived in a country in the midst of intense
political turmoil. The previous year, kyat notes had been demonetized on a whim of the dictator,
General Ne Win, and people’s hard-earned savings were wiped out overnight. The country later
accepted “least-developed nation” status from the United Nations, confirming that twenty-six years of
military dictatorship had turned a country rich in natural resources into one of the poorest in the
world. Student-led uprisings erupted across the country and were met by bloody crackdowns. The final
death toll was estimated to be more than three thousand.
Had her mother not survived the initial stroke or died shortly afterward, Aung San Suu Kyi might have
simply attended the funeral and gone back to Oxford. But her mother lived on until the end of that
convulsed year, thereby ensuring that Aung San Suu Kyi stayed in Burma to nurse her. Being in the
country at such a time placed her at the center of events: she is the daughter of the much-lauded
national hero, General Aung San, who is considered to be the founding father of the Burmese army and
the leader of Burma’s independence struggle against British colonial rule. Aung San was assassinated in
1947 when Aung San Suu Kyi was only two years old, but his life looms over his daughter’s with a
ferocious intensity.
It was her father’s name that drew the crowds when Aung San Suu Kyi eventually agreed to step into
the public arena and give her first political speeches. Over half a million people turned up for a now

legendary speech on August 26, 1988, beneath the Shwedagon Pagoda, where her father had given
numerous rousing calls to action against the colonial oppressors. At that event she stood beneath a
stylized portrait of General Aung San, emphasizing their striking physical similarity: she has her
father’s high cheekbones and ﬁercely engaging charisma. “I could not as my father’s daughter remain
indiﬀerent to all that was going on,” she shouted into the assembled microphones. “This national crisis
could in fact be called the second struggle for national independence.”
Burmese history and folklore is punctuated by millennial leaders and would-be kings who emerge at
times of crisis to lead the people to safety. Here, in this modern era, a female version had appeared,
seemingly by pure chance, during a catastrophic upheaval. Though many could barely hear Aung San
Suu Kyi’s speech that day, the crowd was instantly smitten.
Aung San Suu Kyi’s fast-growing reputation as the rightful leader of a brave new Burma was further
cemented by her facedown with soldiers the following year. Shaken by nationwide protests, the regime
had agreed to hold a general election, and Aung San Suu Kyi was campaigning with members of her
newly founded party, the NLD. Her entourage traveled to Danubyu, a small town in the Irrawaddy
Delta to the west of Rangoon, and were met there by a troop of soldiers blocking the road and
threatening to shoot. She calmly continued to walk through the ranks of bristling and startled soldiers,
emerging unharmed on the other side. Word spread quickly about how this petite, unarmed woman
had emasculated the regime’s soldiers, and her legend grew exponentially within Burma and around
the world.

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