(10/15/91)Woman Against Army

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                   Copyright 1991 Times Newspapers Limited  
                                   The Times

                           October  15, 1991, Tuesday



HEADLINE: Woman Against an Army

 
    The Nobel jury has found greatness in a little room on a quiet Rangoon
street. By awarding its peace prize to Aung San Suu Kyi, held under house arrest
for more than two yeas without charge and for no reason other than her
extraordinary ability to inspire courage in the face of corrupt and illegal
dictatorship, the committee has given hope to Burma.

    The Nobel prize is both a personal tribute and a call to action by the
international community. That was President Havel's purpose in nominating Daw
Suu Kyi for the award. Burma was once a prosperous and relatively stable country
whose ruin by dictatorship has ranked too low in the scale of international

causes. Action should be the consequence of the Nobel award next month, when the
illegality and unspeakable human rights record of Burma's regime come under
scrutiny at the United Nations for which Daw Suu Kyi once worked.

    At the grassroots, Daw Suu Kyi has transformed Burmese political life with a
simple and, against every provocation, resolutely non-violent message: freedom
from fear. A Burmese academic living in England, she was drawn into politics in 
1988, while she was in Burma nursing her dying mother, by a popular uprising
against dictatorship in which the army massacred some 3,000 unarmed protesters
in Rangoon.

    She enjoys authority as the daughter of the independence hero Aung San.  She
has added integrity, convinced that courage will surmount ''the most crushing
state machinery'' in the end, because ''fear is not the natural state of
civilised man''. She has championed the human rights not just of ethnic Burmese,
but of non-Burmese groups. Their demands for more autonomy have kept Burma in a 
state of almost perpetual civil war.

    Under Daw Suu Kyi's leadership, first on the streets and then from
detention, Burma's people have done all they peacefully can to help themselves. 
They voted the dictators out of office in May 1990 with an 82 per cent majority 
for her National League of Democracy (NDL). The State Law and Order
Times Newspapers Limited, October 15, 1991                   
                                                                                
Restoration Council (SLORC), the military-led junta which lives up to the
Orwellian menace of its title, was so confident that it had intimidated the
opposition that it declared the elections free and fair and promised to hand
over power. When the results came in, it proceeded to multiply specious and
unconstitutional pretexts to cheat the voters of their choice. Martial law
remains in force, meetings of more than five are banned, and talking to
foreigners on whom the country's deepening hardships are blamed is a jailable
offence.

    At least 1,000 political prisoners are held under torture in Burma's jails. 
More than 80 of the elected NDL members of parliament are dead, in jail, in
hiding, or have fled to join tens of thousands of refugees in the jungles along 
the Burma-Thai border. From Manerplaw, a border stronghold held by the Karens
who have been fighting for autonomy from Rangoon for years, a group of these MPs
declared the creation of a ''parallel'' government last December.

    The SLORC maintains its domestic terror and finances the civil war thanks to
Chinese arms, the lucrative despoliation of its teak forests through Thai
intermediaries, heroin sales and trade and investment contracts from Western
companies. Britain could press for a Western and Japanese ban on teak imports
from Thailand (which has no teak of its own and whose military government is
hand in glove with the SLORC). Douglas Hurd, who called last May for an arms
Times Newspapers Limited, October 15, 1991                   
                                                                                
embargo, should use Britain's membership of the UN Security Council to lead the 
campaign for a global arms boycott.

    Burma's junta is not merely an ugly dictatorship: it has been unequivocally 
rejected at the ballot box. That makes it plainly illegal. A democratic NDL
government under Daw Suu Kyi could be a government of national reconciliation.
The British Foreign Office has already held talks with  Sein Win,  leader of the
''parallel'' government. It should do all within its power to encourage others
to extend their contact with the opposition generally. For Daw Suu Kyi has been 
one woman against an army for too long.