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BKK Post-Junta denied him his final



Subject: BKK Post-Junta denied him his final wish

ANALYSIS / MICHAEL ARIS AND RANGOON

Junta denied him his final wish
The Burmese ruling junta has once again shown itself as a regime in
stupefying terror of its own people. It denied a dying man's final wish for
fear this could generate further support for his wife, the people's champion
Aung San Suu Kyi.

Harvey Stockwin
Hong Kong


Oxford University lecturer Michael Aris died last Saturday, Mar 27, in an
English hospital, thereby making Burma's leading dissident and winner of the
last general election, Aung San Suu Kyi, a bereft and grieving but still
determined widow. She remains under continued de facto house arrest in her
family home in Rangoon.

Aris's death not merely ends a grim battle with prostate cancer but also
ends an equally grim confrontation with the repressive Burmese military
junta. The Rangoon regime had denied him a visa to visit his wife since
Christmas 1995 and had particularly refused to permit him one last visit to
Rangoon over the last few months, once it became clear that Aris was a dying
man.

The premature death of Aris, who was a specialist in Tibetan culture, brings
to an equally premature end a 27-year love affair built upon the
understanding, by both husband and wife, that Mrs Suu Kyi's first duty, as
the daughter of nationalist hero Aung San, was to the people of Burma.

Clearly indicating her grief and sadness, Mrs Suu Kyi managed to issue a
poignant two-paragraph statement through foreign diplomats Saturday, which
read:

"On behalf of my sons Alexander and Kim, as well as on my own behalf, I want
to thank all those around the world who have supported my husband during his
illness and have given me and my family love and sympathy.

"I am so fortunate to have such a wonderful husband who has always given me
the understanding I needed. Nothing can take that away from me."

Throughout Aris's recent illness, the military junta played an utterly
cynical game, trying to use his terminal affliction and his desire for one
last visa into a means to get Mrs Suu Kyi to leave the country, thereby
making it easier for the authoritarian regime to conclude their continuing
suppression of her National League for Democracy (NLD). The NLD clearly won
the 1990 election which the military themselves organised. That result has
never been honoured.


This manoeuvring over a visa culminated on Mar 26 when an army officer
conveyed to Mrs Suu Kyi that the government was willing to let her go to
London to see her husband on the understanding that she did not politicise
the trip. There was no guarantee that she would be allowed to return home to
Burma. Understandably, Mrs Suu Kyi quickly showed the officer to the door.

The Burmese government's gesture was its belated and inadequate response to
pressure from all over the world and, as the military regime must have
known, was made as Aris lay at death's door.

On Mar 28, in the wake of Aris's death, the Burmese government once more
offered all help to allow Mrs Suu Kyi to visit England for her husband's
funeral. But it again refrained from giving a categorical assurance that she
would be allowed to return.

The crucial point in all this manoeuvring was that while the Burmese
military rulers have made a great show of allowing Mrs Suu Kyi to visit
England, Aris himself never made such a request, but asked only for a visa
so that he could visit his wife in Burma.

Even when they were married in 1972, Mrs Suu Kyi made it plain that, one
day, her commitment to her nation might come before her commitment to her
husband.

"I only ask one thing," she wrote to Aris, "that should my people need me,
you would help me do my duty by them."

In a moving letter, written before their marriage in January 1972, Aung San
Suu Kyi accurately anticipated the future of their relationship:

"Would you mind very much should such a situation ever arise? How probable
it is I do not know but the possibility is there.

"Sometimes I am beset by fears that circumstances and national
considerations might tear us apart just when we are so happy in each other
other that separation would be a torment.

"And yet such fears are so futile and inconsequential: if we love and
cherish each other as much as we can while we can, I am sure love and
compassion will triumph in the end."

In the wake of the death of her mother, and the savage Rangoon massacre in
1988, Mrs Suu Kyi felt she was needed by her long-oppressed people, and her
husband supported her unquestioningly in that decision.

Since then, Aris himself has never asked Mrs Suu Kyi to come to England. The
only time they were together was when he was able occasionally to go to
Burma. The last time was Christmas 1995, when Aris took a statement of Mrs
Suu Kyi's out of the country for her, for which he was denied any more
visas, even during this last final illness.

While some observers wonder if Mrs Suu Kyi might not be able to conduct an
even more formidable campaign of opposition from exile in Bangkok or London,
there is no evidence that she has even considered this option.

Her suspicions that the military might exclude her were she to ever leave
the country are well founded. For several years now, the military has been
trying to alter the constitution to make anyone married to a foreigner
incapable of holding a position of political leadership.

Earlier, too, the regime refused to renew her two sons' Burmese passports,
making them dependent on visas to visit their mother.


It may even be that Aris was unable to have one last conversation with his
wife. Reports from Rangoon indicate that Mrs Suu Kyi's ability to make
international telephone calls also has been denied.

Faced with the sheer inhumanity of the Burmese government's response to the
illness of Aris, every Asean government - Burma is, of course, a member of
Asean - should hang its head in shame.

Circumstances and national considerations did indeed tear Aung San Suu Kyi
and Michael Aris apart. Their final separation must have been more than a
torment.

But Michael Aris helped Aung San Suu Kyi do her duty, as she saw it, until
the end.

* Harvey Stockwin is the Hong Kong correspondent for The Times of India and
Jakarta Post. He has been based in Hong Kong since 1982.