The leader of the Burmese democratic opposition makes her first European tour after her long decade of house arrest
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LONDON. 20 JUNE, 2012. The Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi This Wednesday he received the honorary doctorate that the British University of Oxford awarded him in 1993, but that he could not receive because the military junta that governed Myanmar (ancient Burma) kept her under house arrest for more than 15 years of the last two decades. Suu Kyi studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Saint Hugh's College of that university between 1964 and 1967 and lived in that English city until his return to Myanmar, in 1988.
In an emotional event, Professor Richard Jenkyns reminded him: “Here you studied and forged friendships, here you knew the wonders of youth, here, as wife and mother, you lived a quiet domestic life, until the love of your country and the passion for the cause of freedom made you return.".
Suu Kyi, who turned on Tuesday 67 years, married in Oxford in 1972, with the British Michael Aris, who died in 1999 of cancer, without her being able to visit him. Aris did not obtain a visa to travel to Yangon to join his wife. The military authorized Suu Kyi's trip, but she decided not to for fear that they would never let her return..
The British Foreign Secretary, William Hague, in his appearance yesterday in the House of Commons, described the activist and Nobel Peace Prize —award that Suu Kyi received in Oslo last Saturday with 21 years of delay during this, his first European tour— of “an absolutely inspiring figure”. Hague warned, however, that “there is still a long way to go”, on human rights.
The EU and the US have lifted a good part of the economic and diplomatic sanctions against the military junta that ruled that Asian country with an iron fist for almost half a century.. In an interview with the BBC, Suu Kyi rejected that the opening process undertaken by President Thein Sein has as its sole objective the lifting of these sanctions. Suu Kyi acknowledged in that interview that she would want to govern Myanmar after the elections in 2015, but only if he can “guide the Burmese people on the right path”.
The activist is scheduled to meet with Prince Charles; the prime minister, David Cameron, and with Hague, before delivering a historic speech to both houses of the British Parliament. Yesterday he met with the Dalai Lama, who also toured England. Tibetan spiritual leader frequently called for Suu Kyi's release.
