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HKS-Decision on last visit `most he



Subject: HKS-Decision on last visit `most heartbreaking' for Suu Kyi

Hong Kong Standard April 5, 1999.
Decision on last visit `most heartbreaking' for Suu Kyi
STORY: LONDON: Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has spoken of her
decision not to visit her husband before he died in an interview published.
Ms Suu Kyi told the Sunday Telegraph that her sons Kim, 21, and Alex, 25,
urged her to return to Britain while their father, academic Michael Aris,
was on his deathbed.

Aris, her British husband of 27 years, died on his 53rd birthday in an
Oxford hospital last weekend of prostate cancer, the day after Yangon
authorities offered Ms Suu Kyi a chance to fly to Britain to join him.
``Imagine how hard it was to say no to them,'' she said.

In the interview with Matt Frei, the BBC's South East Asia correspondent, Ms
Suu Kyi said that she had been convinced the military government would not
allow her to return.

Accusing the junta of ``political blackmail'', she said, ``After all, their
greatest wish was to see me leave. They were desperate to get me out of the
country and they thought my husband's illness gave them the perfect
opportunity.''

Ms Suu Kyi would say little else on the subject.

``I never discuss private matters in public,'' she said. ``There are
thousands of people who face the same dilemma that I have had to face, who
have to make these choices.

``In many cases it is far worse. This is daily fare in Burma,'' she said,
adding that her colleagues in the National League for Democracy had urged
her to stay.

``It was only natural,'' she said. ``Apart from being afraid they would lose
a leader, many of them fear even more reprisals and arrests than they are
already used to.''

She admitted the decision was one of the most heartbreaking of her life, but
added: ``This has the makings of a Greek tragedy? Oh don't be silly. I don't
go in for melodrama.''

Aris, an Oxford academic and a distinguished Tibetan scholar, had not seen
Ms Suu Kyi since 1996.

He was cremated at a ceremony attended by only close family and friends in
England on Thursday. - AFP