[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index ][Thread Index ]

Today's New York Times 27/3/99 (r)



It is a good job that the piece in the Times was written by Seth Mydans. It
was
well done. We, at newsforum trreated it in our way and I hope the Burmanetters
were pleased...but whast a terrible way to make good journalism. I can
assure you
that the great god reprisals will eventually get their due for such cheap
politics. JBC

Julien Moe wrote:

> Myanmar Opposition Leader's Husband Dies, Denied a Last Visit
>
> New York Times By Seth Mydans
> Bankok, Thailand, March 27
>
> Michael Aris, the British husband of the Burmese opposition leader Daw Aung
> San Suu Kyi, died of cancer today in London after being denied permission by
> Burmese authorities to pay a last visit to her.
> Mr. Aris, 53, a noted scholar of Tibet at Oxford, had cared for the couple's
> two teenage sons in Britain since his wife took on her political role in1988
> and remained in Myanmar, the former Burma.
> In interviews. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi has said that the loss of contact
with her
> husband and of her chance to be a mother to her sons was one of the
sacrifices
> she had been forced to make to lead the opposition.
> It is a sacrifice her husband said she had warned him she might one day
make,
> from the early yeas of their marriage- and one in which he supported her. He
> has occasionally released statements abroad on her behalf, and together with
> their sons, accepted the Nobel Peace Prize for her Oslo in 1991.
> Mr. Aris had received only periodic permission to visit his wife over the
past
> 10 years, six years of which she was under house arrest. She remains under
> strict Government control in the capital, Yangon (formerly Rangoon), as the
> military continues a campaign of harassment and imprisonment against her
> party, the National League for Demoncracy.
> In recent weeks Mr. Aris, who was in the late stages of prostate cancer, had
> petitioned the Governemtn of Myanmar to allow him to visit her.
> The Government denied his request, saying it would make more sense for the
> healthy wife to visit the sick husband. It also said Myanmar could not
provide
> adequate medical care to a man in his condition.
> But Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi had made it clear she would not leave Myanmar for
> fear  the Government would not let her return.
> She issued a statement today saying, "On behalf of my sons, Alexander and
Kim,
> as well as in my own behalf, I want to thank all those around the world who
> have supported my husband during his illness."
> In an unusual move, her statement was disseminated by the American
Embassy in
> Myanmar, which telephoned it to reports abroad. The embassy has been a
strong
> supporter of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and the pro-democracy movement.
> Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi met Mr. Aris while a student at Oxford. They married in
> 1972. The Government of Myanmar has questioned her patriotism in marrying a
> foreigner.
> It was a visit to her dying mother in 1998 that brought Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi
> to Myanmar at the time of a pro-demoncracy uprising that wad crushed by the
> military at the cost of hundreds of lives.
> The daughter of the country's independence hero, Gen. Aung San, who was
> assassinated in 1947, she took the leading position in the new demoncratic
> opposition, which overwhelmingly won an election in 1990 that was then
> annulled by the Junta.
> In an introduction to a collection of his wife's writings called "Freedom
From
> Fear" (Penguin Books, 1991), Mr. Aris said her decision to stay in Myanmar
> "came as no surprise." "The promise to support her decision, which I had
given
> in advance so many years ago, now had to be fulfilled," he wrote.
> Mr. Aris described a visit to his wife in 1998. " The days I spent alone
with
> her that last time, completely isolated from the world, are among my
happiest
> memories of our many years of marriage," he wrote, adding: " We had all the
> time in the world to talk about many things. I did not suspect this was the
> last time we would be together for the foreseeable furture."