submitted on Thu, 07/12/2007 - 14:36 in Travel Asia with Raimondo Bultrini Niche by zorg 
RAIMONDO BULTRINI Published 20-06-05, La Repubblica
RANGOON – Mario Zaw, as he prefers to be known, has us crouch down in the taxi as he furtively points out University Road. There, at no. 54 lives Ang San Suu Kyi, the only living Nobel Peace prize winner to be found under house arrest.
It is just after dawn, on her sixtieth birthday. Daw, as she is known, is the woman whom an entire people, including the warring minorities in some of Burma’s largest provinces, now regards as its only hope of a return to liberty and prosperity in a country which has almost entirely reverted to the middle ages.
A beam of sunlight shining through a curtain of monsoon clouds is reflected on the calm water of Lake Inya while the headlights of an approaching army tank on patrol have our guide urge us to sink further down into the seats of the taxi.
The lady habitually arises at 4.30 a.m. for her first session of meditation and yoga, but no light filters through her windows. Perhaps there has been a power cut, as so often happens all over this city. However, these are less likely to occur in this particular neighborhood; not out of respect for her – since even on her birthday she is allowed no visitors and her greeting cards are still in the hands of her censors. Rather, it is due to the fact that in the streets around University Road dwell the rulers of “The Golden Land”. Here, the generals have increasingly withdrawn behind the impenetrable walls of their villas with their labyrinthine shaded gardens, protected by the armored vehicles of the Security Forces.
Further away, isolated, we know not whether in his home or in the infamous Insein prison, General Khin Nyunt is awaiting a trial behind closed doors expected to offer high drama. For thirty years he was one of Ang San Suu Kyi’s greatest enemies yet also one of the most open to dialogue and, perhaps for this reason, Nyunt was accused of corruption and expelled from the government in which he served as Prime Minister and Commander of the army’s powerful secret services.
Indeed, just like Ang San Suu Kyi he has been accused by Than Shwe, regarded as Asia’s own General Pinochet, to have endangered the security of the People’s Union of Myanmar. Ang San Suu Kyi in contrast, has never wielded any power. Even when her party won the country’s only democratic election in 1990 with an overwhelming majority she was driven underground. Nor has she ever possessed the vast personal fortunes that Khin Nyunt did. In fact before winning the Nobel Prize, she had to sell most of her family heirlooms, keeping only her beloved piano.
Today while the world demonstrates on her behalf, not even her two servants are allowed out of the prison home and her doctor’s house calls are restricted to one a month. Like a princess in a bewitched castle, Ang San Suu Kyi waits for someone or something to bring about her freedom. But this she will accept only at her own price. More than once has she been offered her liberty in exchange for a ‘minor’ compromise on the electoral procedures for the transition to democracy. This would imply accepting that 70 % of the seats in Parliament be assigned to men of the junta and the same number to the National Government of Reconciliation.
But the lady has no wish to be free when 1400 dissidents are still incarcerated.
Because of her tenacious resistance, yesterday was yet another solitary birthday for her. Meanwhile in their spartan headquarters, members of every rank of the National League for Democracy, most of them survivors of either prison or house arrest, gathered to celebrate in her honor with the devotion of true disciples.
These members of the Central Executive Committee of the National League for Democracy bear on their faces the merciless signs of the passing of time, as one by one they got up to go out into the street, under the scrutiny of the ‘tadmadaw’, the troop soldiers deployed in anti-riot formation, to free several dozen birds from their cages as an auspicious omen for their leader.
In the packed building, with a handful of foreign guests and a few diplomats, the atmosphere was particularly moving and dignified, especially in the room reserved for the veterans of the long struggle, ex students or teachers arrested during the bloody rebellions in 1988 and leaders of other opposition parties; all bonded by the trials of mind and spirit endured in ten to fifteen years of isolation and torture.
All present were had a yellow butterfly badge or wore a flower of the same color, a Buddhist symbol which all those who had remained under “voluntary house arrest” agreed to use.
Yesterday the city of Rangoon seemed particularly quiet and empty, though this may not only have been because of the wide adhesion to the “I arrest myself” strike proclaimed by the National League for Democracy. A few weeks ago, three bombs set off in crowded, popular places claimed dozens of victims and most supermarkets and meeting points are still almost deserted. Nobody has proclaimed responsibility for the bombings, but the government has affirmed its certainty that those responsible were to be found amongst the dissidents and the ethnic groups fighting against Rangoon’s leaders. This is one of the common ‘truths’ advanced by the regime to taint the Gandhian aura of the woman symbolizing the nation’s opposition. But the bombs and the accusations are not the only shadows cast over Ang San Suu Kyi’s sixtieth birthday. So as not to be denied a return to her homeland, she earlier had to renounce a visit to her dying husband in England while for years she has not seen her children nor been able to communicate with them in any way. Such devotion to the cause has turned her into a living icon among her party companions, while across the nation new ways are being found to express solidarity. Millions of Burmese and minority Shan, Karen, Karenni, Kachin, and Paluan women have decided to celebrate the National Day of Women on June 19th, rather than the date of July 3rd, chosen by the junta.
