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A. Lin Neumann - Op-Ed




The following op-ed will appear in Sunday's editions of the Sacramento 
Bee and the San Diego Union Tribune 

Crucible of Terror: 
The Release of Aung San Suu Kyi 

by A. Lin Neumann 
copyright 1995 by A. Lin Neumann. 

I met Aung San Suu Kyi once, briefly, on September 18, 1988. Standing in her
modest Rangoon home, looking tired and serene, she apologized for being unable
to meet with a pair of reporters. But there would be time, later, plenty of
time, to discuss the changes underway in Burma. 

On that day, Suu Kyi, the daughter of her nations founding father, General Aung
San, was a still point of inspiration amidst a swirling popular rebellion that
had brought the hermetic Burmese dictatorship to the point of collapse.
Everywhere in Burma in September 1988, from customs checkpoints to the Ministry
of Information, from the tea shops of Rangoon to school campuses, marketplaces
and pagodas, the regime was seemingly breathing its last.
  
It was a remarkable sight to behold, an utterly  massive expression of peaceful
protest. I was one of a tiny handful of western reporters who had entered the
country on forged visas. With the civil service, including most immigration
officials, honoring a months-long general strike, it was the only way into
Rangoon and the only way to see what was likely to be a transition to democracy
led by Aung San Suu Kyi. 

Of course, the movement did not triumph that day. Just hours after we left her
house on that hot Sunday morning, the military announced that far from
negotiating with its opponents, it intended to impose martial law. 

By that night, tanks were rolling in the streets of Rangoon. By the next
day, the killings began with a horrible, calculated fury. As students
bravely chanted for freedom, soldiers of what became the State Law and
Order Restoration Council (SLORC), calmly set up machine gun emplacements
and swept the crowded streets with gun fire. 

Moving fearfully from our hotel into the streets of the city,  it was obvious
that thousands were being killed. By mid-week, it was over. Trucks carrying
bodies were seen rolling out of the city, diplomats were hearing reports of
similar massacres in rural areas, student leaders were fleeing for their lives,
the blood-slick wards of the Victorian-era Rangoon General Hospital echoed into
the night with the screams of the wounded. 

This was the crucible out of which Aung San Suu Kyi emerged. Following the
massacres of 1988, Suu Kyi remained steadfast. She used her revered status
to work for a transition to democracy, she led her followers to the polls,
she waited and tried to nudge her country toward modernity. Beginning in
July 1990 she endured house arrest, earned the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991
and refused to accept any deal with the regime short of total freedom. By
her mere presence, Suu Kyi, whom the Burmese call simply "the woman",
isolates the regime, making it impossible for them to live down their
crimes and join the prosperous tide that washes over the rest of southeast
Asia. 

Her release from six years of detention this week signals the fact that
the tyrants of Burma have faced a certain reality: SLORC is taking a
tentative step toward joining the community of nations. Their motives are
not necessarily to be praised, because the release coincides with the
annual meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the group of
economically fast-track nations that Burma would like to join. With Suu
Kyi free -- if indeed she remains free -- Burma's leaders obviously hope
the rest of the world will ignore the harsh restrictions it places on its
citizens and its bloody record of repression. 

Still, for all the blood on their hands, the isolated military despots in
Rangoon have done the right thing. But if Burma is ever to shed its
reputation as a backwater of bitterness, much more will have to happen.
The elections that Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, won
in 1990 will have to be recognized.. The restrictions that have exiled or
silenced a generation of students will have to be lifted. The crimes of
1988 will have to be faced. 

And most importantly, those who incarcerated Aung San Suu Kyi and impoverished
her nation, must soon leave. There is no longer any room for them in Burma. 

ends 


A. Lin Neumann is a California based free-lance writer. A former foreign
correspondent, he covered Burma in 1988 for the San Francisco Examiner, Chicago
Tribune and NBC News.