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Read my translation into Spanish here]
It was a quiet evening in Oxford like many others, the last day of March 1988. Our sons were already in bed and we were reading when the telephone rang. Suu picked up the phone to learn that her mother had suffered a severe stroke. She put the phone down and at once started to pack. I had a premonition that our lives would change for ever. Two days later Suu was many thousands of miles away at her mother's bedside in Rangoon.
After three months helping to tend her mother in the hospital day and night, it became clear to Suu and the doctors that her condition would not improve and Suu decided to bring her back to the family home in Rangoon. The familiar surroundings and the help of a dedicated medical team promised to ensure that her remaining days would be peaceful. When Alexander and Kim's summer terms finished at Oxford we flew out to Rangoon to find the house an island of peace and order under Suu's firm, loving control. The study downstairs had been transformed into a hospital ward and the old lady's spirits rallied when she knew her grandsons had arrived.
In the preceding months the students had begun to take to the streets calling for radical change. They had already met with lethal violence at the hands of the authorities. In one incident forty-one wounded students had suffocated to death in a police van. What ignited the whole country just the day after the boys and I arrived was an extraordinary and unexpected speech given by the man who had ruled Burma since he led a military coup in 1962. On 23 July, Ne Win, the general who had turned civilian, announced to a specially convened congress of his Burma Socialist Programme Party that he was resigning forthwith and that a referendum on Burma's political future would be held. I can still remember watching with Suu the scene in the congress as it was shown on state television. She, like the whole country, was electrified. The people at last had a chance to take control of their own destinies. I think it was at this moment more than any other that Suu made up her mind to step forward. However, the idea had gradually taken shape in her mind during the previous fifteen weeks.
In reality, from her earliest childhood, Suu has been deeply preoccupied with the question of what she might do to help her people. She never for a minute forgot that she was the daughter of Burma's national hero, Aung San. It was he who led the struggle for independence from British colonial rule and from the Japanese occupation. Trained by the Japanese during the Second World War, he and his associates among the legendary 'Thirty Comrades' entered Burma with the invading Japanese army who promised independence. When that promise proved false he went underground to lead the resistance with the Burma Independence Army he had created. He assisted the re-invading Allies, and after the war negotiated with Clement Attlee's Labour government for final independence. But he and practically his entire cabinet in the provisional government were gunned down on 19 July 1947 just a few months before the transfer of power. A jealous political rival masterminded the assassination.
Suu, who was born on 19 June 1945, has only the dimmest recollections of her father. However, everything she has learned about him inclined her to believe in his selfless courage and his vision of a free and democratic Burma. Some would say she became obsessed with the image of the father she never knew. At Oxford she steadily acquired a large collection of books and papers in Burmese and English about him. There is a certain inevitability in the way she, like him, has now become an icon of popular hope and longing. In the daughter as in the father there seems an extraordinary coincidence of legend and reality, of word and deed. And yet prior to 1988 it had never been her intention to strive for anything quite so momentous. When she left Oxford to care for her mother she had been set on writing a doctoral thesis on Burmese literature for London University. (A draft chapter is on this computer disk as I write, and I believe she is still registered at the School of Oriental and African Studies as a postgraduate student.) She had also entertained hopes of one day setting up an international scholarship scheme for Burmese students and a network of public libraries in Burma.
Nevertheless, she always used to say to me that if her people ever needed her, she would not fail them. Recently I read again the 187 letters she sent to me in Bhutan from New York in the eight months before we married in London on January 1972. Again and again she expressed her worry that her family and people might misinterpret our marriage and see it as a lessening of her devotion to them. She constantly reminded me that one day she would have to return to Burma, that she counted on my support at that time, not as her due, but as a favour.
'I only ask one thing, that should my people need me, you would help me to do my duty by them.'
'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 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.'
Suu wrote me these words, and many like them, just over twenty years ago. Today she is a prisoner of conscience in her country, totally isolated from the world. The seeds of her present condition were sown long ago.
So it came as no surprise when Suu told me she was resolved to enter the struggle. The promise to support her decision which I had given in advance so many years ago now had to be fulfilled. Like Suu perhaps, I had imagined that if a day of reckoning were to come, it would happen later in life when our children were grown up. But fate and history never seem to work in orderly ways. Timings are unpredictable and do not wait upon convenience. Moreover, the laws of human history are too uncertain to be used as a basis for action. All that Suu had to draw on were her very finely cultivated sense of commitment and her powers of reason. But she was also blessed and burdened with her unique status as the daughter of the national hero. Although the regime had appropriated his image for their own purposes, his reputation was still inviolate in the hearts of the common people. Moreover Suu had never lost her Burmese identity and values through all the years abroad. Her knowledge of the Burmese heritage, her wonderful fluency in her own language and, very important, her refusal to give up her Burmese citizenship and passport despite her marriage to an Englishman —all these factors conspired with the sad circumstances of her mother's final illness to make her engagement unavoidable.
In the nationwide turbulence which followed Ne Win's resignation on 23 July 1988 and the immediate refusal by his party to agree to a referendum on Burma's future, Suu's house quickly became the main centre of political activity in the country and the scene of such continuous comings and goings as the curfew allowed. Every conceivable type of activist from all walks of life and all generations poured in. Suu talked to them all about human rights, an expression which had little currency in Burma till then. She began to take her first steps into the maelstrom beyond her gates. Alexander, Kim and I were behind her when she addressed a colossal rally at the Shwedagon Pagoda for the first time on 26 August.
Despite all the frenetic activity in her house, it never really lost the sense of being a haven of love and care. Suu is an astonishing person by any standards, and I think I can say I know her after twenty years of marriage, but I shall never quite understand how she managed to divide her efforts so equally between the devoted care of her incapacitated, dying mother and all the activity which brought her the leadership of the struggle for human rights and democracy in her country. It has something to do with her inflexible sense of duty and her sure grasp of what is right and wrong —qualities which can sit as a dead weight on some shoulders but which she carries with such grace.
By the time Suu's mother died on 27 December, nine months after her first stroke, it seemed as if several empires had come and gone. The carnival of mass demonstrations had turned repeatedly to bloodshed as the authorities tried to stem the tide of revolt sweeping the country. I shall not quickly forget the surge of hope and fear, the elation followed by near despair, the prolonged gunfire in the streets and the doves cooing in the garden through it all.
Three heads of state were forced by the people's movement to resign in quick succession, though ultimate power remained vested in the military officers loyal to Ne Win. The army controlled by those officers finally staged a coup on 18 September and brought in their State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC). They reiterated the promise of free and fair elections while clearing the streets with gunfire. Suu and her close associates promptly formed their party, the National League for Democracy (NLD).
It was the young people who already belonged to her party who brought order to the milling crowds of thousands who came to attend her mother's funeral on 2 January 1989. Having been forced out of the country some weeks earlier, I was allowed to return to Rangoon to be with Suu when her mother died. I flew in from Bangkok with our sons, whose school terms had again finished. Suu's only surviving, brother was even allowed to come from America for the funeral, though he was now an American citizen to whom the authorities would normally deny a visit.
The negotiations and arrangements for the funeral of the widow of the national hero were conducted in exemplary fashion. It was the only occasion when the authorities offered Suu any co-operation, realizing that if they failed in this the consequences might be disastrous. Soldiers, students and politicians combined with Suu to make orderly plans in a way that made everyone realize what the country would achieve if unity could be won under her leadership. But the co-operation of the military was, alas, to prove very short-lived. Suu's growing prestige and popularity seemed to strike at the very heart of all that the army had come to represent. The constant appeals for dialogue and under standing which she issued before and after this occasion all went unheeded.
In the next seven months Suu consolidated her party's strength by touring almost the entire country. The boys and I were back at Oxford by then. Although Suu wrote as often as she possibly could, we were more dependent for news on the press reports than on her letters. We would read in the papers of the official harassment and vilification she endured at the hands of the authorities. The effect of this on the people was opposite to the one intended: the more she was attacked, the more the people flocked to her banner.
With hindsight it is easy to see why she and her party were perceived as the main threat to all the interests vested in the old system. The authorities had counted on the scores of new parties to produce a split parliament which they could dominate in any fashion they pleased. The head of state, General Saw Maung, was on record as saying he expected the next government to be a coalition of many parties. The prospect of a single party sweeping the board went counter to all they hoped for.
I shall not attempt to piece together here Suu's policies, movements and activities in this period. I was not with her and cannot speak from first-hand experience. The task must wait for future historians when time, distance and access to all the sources now hidden enable a dispassionate appraisal. But I do not think they will find cause to suggest that Suu acted with anything but dedication to a selfless cause. She brought overwhelming unity to a spontaneous, hitherto leaderless revolt. She insisted at all times that the movement should be based on a non-violent struggle for human rights as the primary object. She spoke to the common people of her country as they had not been spoken to for so long —as individuals worthy of love and respect. In a prolonged campaign of civil disobedience she flouted a great number of the Draconian measures introduced by the authorities. She wrote countless letters to the authorities complaining of their excesses —but with no response. At the same time she constantly begged them to open a proper dialogue —but to no effect at all.
Matters came to a head in July 1989. In the days leading up to the annual Martyrs' Day on the 19th when the death of her father and his cabinet is traditionally commemorated, Suu had decided to point her finger at the main obstacle to political change. She voiced the belief, shared by many but never spoken in public, that the army was still being controlled by the retired general Ne Win. She expressed the doubt that the ruling junta ever intended to keep their promise of transferring power to a civilian government. When she announced her plan to lead a march to pay tribute to the martyrs, the authorities moved quickly to fill the streets with troops. Faced again with the prospect of terrible bloodshed in Rangoon, Suu called off the march.
Our sons Alexander and Kim had already joined Suu from their schools in Oxford, their third trip since the whole drama began to unfold. I could not come with them because my own father had just died in Scotland. On 20 July I heard the news that Suu had been placed under house arrest. I had absolutely no idea of her condition or that of the boys, but very fortunately I had a valid visa for Burma in my passport. I informed the authorities of my plan to come out to Rangoon right away.
As the plane taxied to a halt at Mingaladon Airport I could see a lot of military activity on the tarmac. The plane was surrounded by troops and as I walked down the gangplank I was quickly identified and escorted away to the VIP lounge. The British Embassy official who had come to meet me was unable to make contact. For twenty-two days I effectively disappeared from sight. Nobody knew what had happened to me. The British press carried stories about how an Oxford don had gone missing. My family in England was extremely worried. The British government and the European Community pressed very hard for consular contact, but to no avail. I had vanished.
The story of what really happened in those three weeks, perhaps the greatest single crisis we have so far had to face as a family, could occupy a whole book, but let me be brief. The very personable military officer who met me at the airport said that if I agreed to abide by the same terms under which Suu had been placed under detention I could stay with her and the boys. Those terms included no contact with any embassy or any person engaged in politics. I was able to say truthfully that I had only come to be with the family and saw no difficulty in abiding by these terms. We drove off from the airport to find the house surrounded by troops. The gates were opened and we drove in. I had no idea what to expect.
I arrived to find Suu in the third day of a hunger strike. Her single demand was that she should be allowed to go to prison with all of her young supporters who had been taken away from her compound when the authorities arrested her. She believed her presence with them in prison would afford them some protection from maltreatment. She took her last meal on the evening of 20 July, the day of her arrest, and for the following twelve days until almost noon on 1 August she accepted only water. On that day a military officer came to give her his personal assurance, on behalf of the authorities, that her young people would not be tortured and that the cases against them would be heard by due process of law. She accepted this compromise, and the doctors who had been deputed to attend her, whose treatment she had hitherto refused, immediately put her on an intravenous drip with her consent. She had lost twelve pounds in weight. I still do not know if the authorities kept their promise.
In all this, Suu had been very calm and the boys too. She had spent the days of her fast resting quietly, reading and talking to us. I was less calm, though I tried to pretend to be. Acting as go- between I had even been brought to a grand meeting in Rangoon City Hall in front of cameras to present Suu's demands to the Rangoon Command Commander and a room full of officers and through them to the SLORC leadership. At all times I met with nothing but courtesy. Eleven days after Suu ended her fast I was finally escorted to see the British Consul in a military guesthouse. In the presence of SLORC officials I confirmed the whole story of Suu's hunger strike which had already somehow leaked out. Indeed, I later discovered that the story had appeared in the Asia-Pacific edition of Time magazine with her picture on the cover.
Suu recovered her weight and strength in the days ahead. The crisis had passed and the tension eased. The boys learned martial arts from the guards. We put the house in order. I made arrangements with the authorities to send Suu parcels from England and to exchange letters with her. Things seemed to be on quite an even keel by the time the Oxford term loomed upon us once again. We left for England on 2 September.
It was the last time the boys were allowed to see their mother. Some days after we arrived in England the Burmese Embassy in London informed me that the boys' Burmese passports were invalid and now cancelled since they were not entitled to Burmese citizenship. All attempts to obtain visas on their new British passports have failed. Very obviously the plan was to break Suu's spirit by separating her from her children in the hope she would accept permanent exile. I myself was allowed to return once more to be with her for a fortnight the following Christmas. It seems the authorities had hoped I would try to persuade her to leave with me. In fact, knowing the strength of Suu's determination, I had not even thought of doing this. Perhaps at that moment they realized I was no longer useful to their purpose.
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. It was wonderfully peaceful. Suu had established a strict regime of exercise, study and piano which I managed to disrupt. She was memorizing a number of Buddhist sutras. I produced Christmas presents I had brought one by one to spread them out over several days. We had all the time in the world to talk about many things. I did not suspect this would be the last time we would be together for the foreseeable future.
While I was there the authorities brought in papers from her party concerning the elections. She was to sign them if she agreed to stand for election in spite of her incarceration. She did so. But several weeks later it was learnt that the SLORC had contrived to rule that her candidacy was invalid. It made no difference in the end to the election results. On 27 May 1990 the people of Burma went to the polls and voted for the party she had founded and led. In an extraordinary landslide victory the National League for Democracy won 392 of the 485 seats contested, more than 80 per cent. Contrary to expectations, the polling was totally free and fair. The reason why the elections were allowed to take place at all seems to have been because the SLORC even then believed no single party could win. But Suu had always sensed that if a free election did take place, then her party would certainly gain the victory. I am not sure, though, that even she realized the scale such a victory might take. Again she appeared on the cover of Time magazine in Asia. The photograph must have been taken during one of her long campaign trips. Her lips are cracked and her eyes sore with dust.
The vote was a personal one for her: often the voters knew nothing about their candidate except that he represented Suu. Locked away for ten months before the elections, her place in the hearts of the Burmese had meanwhile only grown stronger. There is a great irony in this, for she had become the focus of a personality cult which she would have been the first to decry. Loyalty to principles, she had often said, was more important than loyalty to individuals. But she personified in the fullest measure the principles she and everyone else were striving for and so the people voted for her.
In the days which followed there was great expectancy that the ruling junta would release her from detention and announce a timetable to transfer power to the National League for Democracy. Back in Oxford I thought at the very least they might allow the boys and me to visit her again. But it was not to be. I received a final letter from her dated 7 July 1990 in which she asked me for copies of the Indian epics, the Ramayana and the Mahabkarata. She commented on the fact that there was much more humour in the Thai and Cambodian depiction of the monkey-king Hanuman than in the original Indian version. Her letter was otherwise concerned with family matters and things she wanted me to send her. It was the last we received from her. Every attempt since then to regain contact has failed.
A great number of people have tried their best to persuade the junta to relent and allow us access to Suu, but so far to no avail. As I write these words it is more than two years since our sons last saw their mother, a year and nearly ten months since I was with her, and a year and nearly two months since she was last able to write to us. The SLORC does its best to conceal the completeness of her isolation, refusing even to call it house arrest but instead 'restricted residence'. They say she is free to rejoin her family at any time, refusing to accept that in spite of her British husband she is wholly Burmese, and that the Burmese people have amply demonstrated that they hold her as their own and as the talisman of their future freedom.
Events have proved her right. The regime appears to have no intention of transferring power in the foreseeable future. There is much official talk of the need for a new constitution before power can be transferred but no timetable has been announced to draw one up. The free elections took place, bestowing a clear mandate —but nothing has happened. Suu is still quite alone.
Suu's writings in this collection fall naturally into two parts: firstly those she completed in Oxford, Kyoto and Simla before her return to Burma in 1988, and secondly a medley of later essays, speeches, letters and interviews resulting from her involve ment in the struggle for human rights and democracy in her country. The basic division of the book therefore reflects the fundamental change in her fortunes and those of her country in 1988. I believe, however, that there is an underlying consistency uniting the two parts. It stems from Suu's unchanging concern to understand her inheritance, to communicate that understanding to others and to apply it to her country's problems.
The earlier writings were addressed to several very different readerships. Some may say that to bring them now within the covers of the same book will give it an uneven tone and quality. On the other hand, they faithfully reflect Suu's gift of communicating at various levels. The biographical portrait of her father was written for an historical series on Asian leaders intended for senior high-school students in Australia. It is followed by a very simple and factual account of her country and people aimed at English-speaking schoolchildren throughout the world. By contrast, her comparative study of intellectual developments in Burma and India under colonialism is a sophisticated and innovatory work. Some who work in the field of Burmese studies have told me that it breaks new ground both in its method of approach and in its findings. The final piece of Part One, on the interconnections of literature and nationalism in the period 1910-40, also points to the kind of scholarship Suu was engaged in when fate intruded.
These four pieces were all written by her in the midst of raising a young family on slender means. For many years Suu took on the major responsibilities at home in order to free me for my own research. And she helped me beyond measure in my work too. She encouraged me in a field the world looks on as arcane; she applied her own rigorous gift of logic to my arguments; and her sensitivity opened up many new perspectives —invariably causing me to rethink and reformulate. Since we shared many trips and periods of residence in the Himalayas (in Bhutan, Nepal, Ladakh, Arunachal Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh), she was in a very good position to help me in my writings on the area.
Part Two of this book consists of a selection of miscellaneous documents composed by Suu during her later struggle. Together they convey something of the atmosphere of the whole movement and Suu's quick response to the unfolding political situation. The three opening essays are probably her most reflective and articulated statements on the movement for democracy in Burma, on the universality of human rights and on the codes, principles and customs found in the Buddhist heritage which the Burmese people now take to support and guarantee those rights. The inspiration she derives from her father's role and sacrifice is always implicit when it is not explicit both in these essays and elsewhere. The remaining documents are arranged in chronological sequence from the point when she stepped forward with her first political initiative right through to the events which led up to her house arrest. The reader can follow only a few of her movements between these points in her own words, south to the Irrawaddy delta and north to Kachin State, but there were many other trips all over the country. It should be realized that these sixteen documents form only a minute fraction of all the words she wrote or spoke in this period. Whatever records may survive of her total output, at the moment they lie quite beyond reach. But her voice, long silenced, is heard again in this small selection.
In Part Three I have brought together four contributions by others. The first two are very personal reminiscences of Suu in her 'chrysalis period'. The second two are assessments of her later role. Inevitably there is some degree of overlap and repetition within each pair, but I hope this is compensated by the more rounded picture of Suu which emerges from their sum. I have done my best to avoid influencing the authors in any way, and my role as editor has been confined to adjusting a few points of fact and style. I cannot vouch for the truth of every one of the assertions made about Suu or the events related at first or second hand —simply because I was not present when many of them took place. I believe, however, each author has tried hard to convey the truth.
September 1991
Seventeen days after sending this book to the publishers I received an early telephone call from the Norwegian Nobel Committee telling me of Suu's great award. The following is part of the statement I released in a vain attempt to stem the onslaught of the world's press.
I was informed today that my dear wife Sun has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Many will now for the first time learn of her courageous leadership of the non-violent struggle for the restoration of human rights in her country. I believe her role will come to serve as an inspiration to a great number of people in the world today.
The joy and pride which I and our children feel at this moment is matched by sadness and continuing apprehension. I am not sure if the Nobel Peace Prize has ever been given to someone in a situation of such extreme isolation and peril. It has certainly never before been given to a woman in that condition. Suu is now in the third year of her political detention at the hands of Burma's military rulers. We, her family, are denied any contact whatsoever with her and know nothing of her condition except that she is quite alone. We do not even know if she is still kept in her own house or if she has been moved elsewhere.
It seems the authorities in Burma have many times offered to release her if she accepts going into permanent exile. I know Suu well enough to be sure she will not do this: she is firmly committed to her chosen path, whatever the sacrifice it entails. I think she will therefore only be able to travel to Oslo in December to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in person if the authorities undertake not to prevent her return, even if it is only to resume her solitary detention.
It is my earnest hope and prayer that the Peace Prize will somehow lead to what she has always strived for —a process of dialogue aimed at achieving lasting peace in her country. Selfishly I also hope our family's situation will be eased as a result of this supreme gesture of recognition for her moral and physical courage, and that we may at last be allowed to pay her visits again. We miss her very much.
14 October 1991
From May 1992 to January 1995 our sons and I were able to pay Suu regular visits while her detention continued. This gave her the opportunity to issue occasional statements and respond to a few invitations to compose public speeches, which I and others then delivered on her behalf. Two of these are included in this new edition of her writings, along with the transcript of part of her conversation with Congressman Bill Richardson in February 1994. The collection as it now stands ends, very appropriately, with the statement Suu read to assembled reporters and journal ists on 11 July 1995, the day after her release from nearly six years of detention. Looking now at the photograph of her taken then, which I have chosen for the cover, I see again what these long years have done to her, the wisdom and beauty beyond the suffering endured. Who can now doubt her love and courage?
Oxford, 12 July 1995
PAINFUL BITS. Edited by Torribio Blups
http://www.torribioblups.net/painfulbits
Last updated on December 05, 2001