Everywhere in the world where there is oppression there is also thought control and censorship. That is why the BBC World Service has been an important life line for freedom and has given societies starved of information that which they crave the most. Witness the testimony of one of freedom’s most wonderful protagonist the Burmese Leader and Nobel Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, known in Burma simply as “The Lady.”
There were many poignant moments in Aung San Suu Kyi's Reith Lectures (Radio 4), but one of the most powerful things about it was that as she spoke eloquently about freedom, was the fact this is a clandestine lectures that had to be smuggled out of Burma. As this bravest of women and Nobel Laureate said with the authority and respect her long and lonely campaign for the freedom and dignity of the Burmese People has earned;
“To be speaking to you now, through the BBC, has a very special meaning for me. It means that, once again, I am officially a free person. When I was officially un-free - that is to say when I was under house arrest - it was the BBC that spoke to me. I listened. But that listening also gave me a kind of freedom: the freedom of reaching out to other minds.
Of course it was not the same as a personal exchange, but it was a form of human contact. The freedom to make contact with other human beings with whom you may wish to share your thoughts, your hopes, your laughter, and at times even your anger and indignation is a right that should never be violated.
Even though I cannot be with you in person today, I am so grateful for this opportunity to exercise my right to human contact by sharing with you my thoughts on what freedom means to me and to others across the world who are still in the sad state of what I would call un-freedom.”
Let us not have any false optimism about Burma now that Nobel Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been “released” from house arrest. Suu Kyi will only be free when Burma and its long suffering people are free. The Nobel Peace Prize winner has been detained for 15 of the past 21 years. It is not yet clear if any conditions have been placed on her release.
Let us also not forget when we see her quiet dignity that she is the only democratically elected leader of Burma since independence. In May 1990, Aung San Suu Kyi's NLD convincingly won the polls, despite the fact that she herself was under house arrest and disqualified from standing. But the junta refused to hand over control, and has remained in power ever since. Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of the country's independence hero, General Aung San. He was assassinated during the transition period in July 1947, just six months before independence. Aung San Suu Kyi was only two years old at the time.
So it was a Reith Lecture without a lecturer present in front of an audience. This didn't matter to those of us listening on the radio and in fact echoed the role radio played for San Suu Kyi in her years of incarceration. "When I was officially un-free," she said at the beginning of her lecture, "it was the BBC that spoke to me."
Let us say it loud, let us say it clear; Aung San Suu Kyi will only be free when Burma and its long suffering people are free of the Goon Squad Junta. The struggle continues.
For more background see;
http://daithaic.blogspot.com/2010/11/suu-kyi-will-be-free-only-when-burma-is.html
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