Aung San Suu Kyi.

• Author: Kean, Leslie
• Position: Nobel Peace Laureate form Burma - Interview

The Burmese Nobel Peace Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi talked to us over a noisy phone line from her Rangoon headquarters in mid-January. She informed us that the repression against her had escalated to violent physical attacks. Suu Kyi, who was under house arrest for six years until July 1995, was tongue-and-cheek about the intrusive buzz on her telephone line. She said the noisy line was due to the presence of military-intelligence tape recorders, then laughed. "We couldn't survive without our sense of humor," she explained.

Aung San Suu Kyi may be the most surveilled human being on the face of the Earth. The SLORC (State Law and Order Restoration Council), which took over the country in 1988 and changed the name of Burma to Myanmar, sees Suu Kyi as its primary threat. She heads the popular opposition and, by virtue of her own extraordinary family history, she has a strong claim on the allegiance of the Burmese people.

Suu Kyi's father, Aung San, led the successful battle against British colonial rule in 1947. He was assassinated that same year at age thirty-two, when Suu Kyi was only two. Aung San is a legend and a national hero in Burma--in the eyes of the people and military alike. There are statues of him, museums about him, and streets named after him. His image is featured on the Burmese one-kyat bill, which has been yanked from circulation by the SLORC. When you hold the bill up to the light, the portrait of the independence hero greatly resembles his daughter. Student activists and pro-democracy protesters have adopted the note, worth less than a penny, as their flag of freedom, waving it during protest gatherings at risk of arrest. It has come to be known as the "democracy note."

Aung San Suu Kyi says that she has no intention of shying away from the legacy of her father. "I could not, as my father's daughter, remain indifferent to all that was going on," she declared before an audience of 500,000 at the beginning of her campaign in 1988. "This national crisis could in fact be called the second struggle for national independence."

For its part, the SLORC--buoyed by billions from Burma's booming drug trade and foreign investment--shows no intention of turning over power peacefully. Indeed, judging from our conversations and the increasing violence in Burma, further repression and major bloodshed loom on the horizon as a distinct possibility, although Aung San Suu Kyi and her followers remain steadfastly committed to the path of nonviolence.

Suu Kyi won the overwhelming support of the people of Burma during her "revolution-of-the-spirit" campaign for democracy in 1988-1989, following a bloody takeover by the SLORC in which thousands of demonstrators were massacred in the streets. Her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), won a landslide victory in the 1990 elections. She was under house arrest and was not an official candidate, though the triumph of the NLD was vindication for Suu Kyi.

In her most famous essay, "Freedom From Fear," released in 1991, Aung San Suu Kyi explains the necessity for individual transformation to bring about real change. "It is not enough merely to call for freedom, democracy, and human rights. There has to be a united determination to persevere in the struggle, to make sacrifices in the name of enduring truths, to resist the corrupting influences of desire, ill will, ignorance, and fear. Among the basic freedoms to which men aspire that their lives might be full and uncramped, freedom from fear stands out as both a means and an end."

Until a few months ago, Suu Kyi was able to give speeches at her front gate every Saturday and Sunday, answering questions the people submitted to her. Undaunted by roving military-intelligence video cameras and the imminent risk of arrest, thousands of Burmese would sit on old newspapers and plastic bags on the sidewalk to cheer, laugh, and listen to "the lady."

But the junta has now banned these gatherings and in recent months has kept Suu Kyi under de-facto house arrest. The authorities have arrested hundreds of her party members and prevented Suu Kyi from meeting with journalists and diplomats. If they leave her house, her bodyguards and assistants face being hauled off to one of Burma's horrific prisons.

Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 while under house arrest, and was cited by the Nobel Committee as "one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Asia in recent decades." She is the recipient of numerous other prestigious international awards, and she presented the keynote address, smuggled out on videotape, to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women...