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Reuters - Myanmar's Suu Kyi celebra



Subject: Reuters - Myanmar's Suu Kyi celebrates low-key birthday


Myanmar's Suu Kyi celebrates low-key birthday
03:29 a.m. Jun 19, 1999 Eastern
YANGON, June 19 (Reuters) - Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi
turned 54 on Saturday and celebrated her birthday quietly with a religious
ceremony performed by Buddhist monks at her Yangon residence, party members
said.

Suu Kyi offered meals to the monks at her lakeside home in the centre of the
city and only close friends and relatives attended the low-key celebration.

Some 300 supporters, mostly women, had turned up on Friday at the
headquarters of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party to
commemorate the June 19 Myanmar Women's Day named in her honour.

``I would like to express my sincere thanks and praise Myanmar women for
standing side by side with me in struggling for democracy,'' a party source
quoted Suu Kyi as telling them.

Government-run newspapers on Saturday criticised the decision last year by
Suu Kyi's NLD party activists to commemorate her birthday as a national day.

``Designating her birthday as Myanmar Women's Day is an insult to Myanmar
patriots,'' said one newspaper.

In neighbouring Thailand, around 80 dissidents and Suu Kyi supporters staged
a noisy protest outside the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok to celebrate the
occasion.

They shouted ``Happy Birthday and Long Live Suu Kyi'' and ``Down with the
military regime in Myanmar.''

The ruling military and the NLD have been at loggerheads since they refused
to recognise the NLD's sweeping victory in 1990 elections.

Late last year the military stepped up suppression of the NLD after Suu Kyi
demanded that a People's Parliament of the elected MPs be convened.
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