Free Aung San Suu Kyi

I am appalled by the way the Burma’s( Myanmar) military government treated Aung San Suu Yi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize Prize winner. She had been kept under strict house arrest by the Military Regime since she won the 1990 election. She was then put on trial last week for violating the detention order by allowing an American man, John Yettaw, who swam to her house on the bank of Inya Lake in Rangoon. She is now in jail awaiting the decision of the court. Why lock her up now that the house arrest order has been lifted? To give shelter to a strange man who swam across the lake to her house is not a crime. On the contrary, it is an humanitarian act. She said that she has nothing to do with it and does not deserve to spend one more minute in the Rangoon’s Insein Prison for being kind to another human being.The Thai Government did the right thing to officially pleaded with the Burmese authority, on behalf of ASEAN, to set her free. I am glad that she also received words of support from the United Nations Secretary-General, leader of governments, journalists and diplomats in Burma. The women’s movements around the world also stand behind her in this struggle. We have been campaigning for her release ever since she was arrested. I remember that in 1995, Supatra Masdit, Convenor of the NGO Forum, (organized by non-governmental organizations as parallel activities to the Beijing United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women), went quietly from Thailand to visit Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon (Yangon), recorded the interview with her, then brought the video tape to show to the gatherings of 40,000 women and men who attended the meeting at Huiru Conference Hall. We tremendously admire Aung San Suu Kyi’s for her courage and determination to bring democracy and gender equality to men and women of Burma. To us, she is an important female political leader of Asia. It is therefore not much for us to hope that she will be free soon and to run again as a candidate for the next election which is planned for next year.