Finally free from the clutches of Burma’s ruling generals and the lonely life of house arrest they subjected her to, Aung San Suu Kyi now finds she cannot escape from herself.
At the headquarters of her currently-outlawed political party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), images of her are everywhere: on posters, calendars and pamphlets, T-shirts, necklaces and earrings.
As she poses politely for photos, the Guardian asks who the golden bust behind her represents. “It’s supposed to be me,” she says. “I wish people wouldn’t make busts or posters of me, it is a very strange thing to be looking at yourself all the time. It’s not like this at my house, I promise you. I have pictures of my children.”
The building is filled to overflowing; the noise of a hundred conversations reverberate off the peeling wars and concrete floors. Today, there are more people than chairs, and those left without crouch against walls.
Across the road, perched on conspicuous orange motorbikes, the government’s spies are kept busy, watching her party headquarters through camera lenses and binoculars. But Aung San Suu Kyi is unconcerned about the attention from the military’s special branch. They will be her companion every day she is free.
“That is for them to worry about. I can only do what I feel I need to do, what I can do for the people of Burma,” she says. “They will follow me, I cannot stop that. I cannot worry.”
Aung San Suu Kyi is 65, but looks 20 years younger. A hint of grey at her temples is the only physical sign of the strains of two decades spent resisting a brutal military regime. She has a piercing gaze, which rarely moves from her interrogator, and her response is deliberate when pushed about the government’s overt, hostile attention. She is not frightened that she could be detained again – a fate that has befallen her for 15 of the last 21 years.
“It is not a fear, it’s a possibility that I live with. I understand that is the situation, and I have to accept it. They have done it before, and it is very possible they will do it again, but it is not something I fear every day. It is my situation.”
It is nearly a week since military officials came to her door at 54 University Avenue, Rangoon, and told her she was free, noting perversely, her good behaviour.
Since then, she has been almost constantly in meetings of one sort or another. Diplomats and journalists from every corner of the globe have formed a queue at the bottom of the stairs leading to her door. She has taken phone calls from presidents and prime ministers. She has met with NLD party elders to discuss strategy and legal challenges and sanctions policy.
But she has stopped too, amid the throng of admirers, to talk to people on the street, old women who claim kinship, children who have a flower for her.
She has spoken with her sons by phone every day – something she could never do before, though there is no word on when she will be allowed to see them – she has visited the high court to lodge an appeal against her party’s disbanding, and visited an HIV/AIDS shelter. Everywhere she goes, she is mobbed.
She is happy, “because now I am free”.
Read more here at Guardian.
