TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/102891/1028003.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.6 KB | 81 lines

                                                                                WORLD, Page 73

BURMA

Heroine in Chains


The Nobel Peace Prize won by Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest
since 1989, will not bring her freedom


    As the overnight curfew ended, a squad of soldiers lifted
barbed-wire barricades from the middle of Rangoon's tree-lined
University Avenue. Then they took up positions, as they do every
day, at four sentry boxes in front of the residential compound
where Aung San Suu Kyi, 46, the leader of Burma's democratic
opposition, has been under house arrest since July 1989.

    Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee said last week
that they could not be sure that Aung San Suu Kyi even knew she
had been awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. But if she has
access to a shortwave radio, she would have learned the news
from overseas without delay. As the head of an opposition using
"nonviolent means to resist a regime characterized by
brutality," read the Nobel citation, Aung San Suu Kyi has become
"one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Asia
in recent decades." Within hours much of Burma -- which the
ruling junta has renamed Myanmar -- was whispering the news.

    For Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, the
Peace Prize was the first major morale booster in more than a
year. Although she was already under house arrest at the time,
her party won a landslide victory in the May 1990 parliamentary
elections, taking 392 of the 485 seats. But the generals
refused to surrender power. Instead they arrested scores of
elected parliamentarians and hundreds of Buddhist monks.

    Burma's military rulers were predictably unimpressed by
last week's news. The cool reception the award was given in
other Asian states was hardly more encouraging. "It might prick
the conscience of a few people," said Zakaria Ahmad, head of
strategic and security studies at the National University of
Malaysia, "but it won't change anything." A Singaporean diplomat
categorized the prize as "almost a nonevent."

    Such attitudes illustrate the contrast between the West's
vocal outrage at human-rights abuses, even as Western oil
companies are exploring there, and the Asian view that such
issues should be handled without direct confrontation. Some
Asians even see the latest Peace Prize as a form of interference
in Burma's domestic affairs, even of neocolonial badgering.
Almost all Asian governments are more eager to do business with
Burma than to put pressure on it. South Korea recently opened
a household-appliance factory there. China has agreed to sell
the junta almost $1 billion in armaments, partly in return for
Burmese teak and minerals.

    The six-member Association of South East Asian Nations, a
political and economic grouping, has repeatedly rejected calls
from the West to impose economic sanctions on Burma. Lee Kuan
Yew, the former Prime Minister of Singapore, explains that ASEAN
thinks sanctions will not work. "The ASEAN view," he says, "is
that if we boycott or condemn the government, we'll lose
influence with it."

    The prize, which includes a gold medal and about $1
million, will be presented in Oslo in December, but Aung San Suu
Kyi is not likely to be there. The junta has told her she can
leave the country only if she agrees never to return, a
condition she flatly refuses. Like other foes of injustice,
whose efforts take place far off the world's stage, she cannot
know what the outcome of her struggle will be.


By Bruce W. Nelan. Reported by Sandra Burton and David S.
Jackson/Hong Kong.