Chapter 14. Sources on Aung San Suu Kyi. From the book `Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy' by Gustaaf Houtman

I will deal with Aung San Suu Kyi's own writings later, but here I wish to briefly draw attention to the source material available in book form, which has so far all been of journalistic provenance. An overall comment on her profile presented in these works is necessary here.

It is difficult to collect in-depth information about her as she has been isolated from the outside world except for the occasional interview with a journalist or politician. Her telephone has been cut off and visitors fear the unwelcome attention of military intelligence. More than that, however, it is difficult to come to terms objectively with personalities such as Aung San Suu Kyi because those who have written about her have also invested emotionally in her. It is difficult to be neutral.

This makes any attempt to write an objective account of her life very difficult. And yet it is important that an attempt is made to highlight her life in different ways, for there is no doubt that Aung San Suu Kyi plays a role internationally, as she has captured the imagination of people all over the world. Not only does she represent the hope for the future on the part of the majority of the Burmese people, but also most free-thinking persons in the international environment. Indeed, she is being held up as an icon of humanitarian and democratic values under threat.

It is uncommon for a political leader to have the first biography intended to inform children, but this is the case with Aung San Suu Kyi. The pedagogical value of her life seems inexhaustible in democratic countries. She has become an icon in particular for the women's movement. Her role as a mother deprived of access to her children has resulted in the earliest English-language biographies of Aung San Suu Kyi interestingly targeted as children's books. It is the women authors, namely Whitney and Victor who sketch these dimensions most effectively, thus exposing the threat that these military regimes pose to Burmese family life. In Japan, though her speeches and writings have been translated,[1] Aung San Suu Kyi was the focus of manga comic book-style young literature, before any other account of her life appeared.[2]

It is not surprising that this should be the case, for Aung San Suu Kyi's internationalist and humanitarian approach to democracy, transcends boundaries and appeals to internationalist sentiment, and it represents the major challenge to authoritarian governments particularly in Asia. Certainly, from the point of view of the Burmese regime she represents a serious threat. Its imagery, as represented by Hpe Kan Kaùng, is that of a woman of loose morals who prefers foreigners to Burmese and is about to set fire to the nation. However, this literature came into existence, it should be noted, under severe conditions. The regime censored positive, and sponsored negative and destructive stories about her. For example, in October 1998 officials summoned local reporters, writers and publishers from state-owned and joint venture publications to print articles attacking her. Burmese newspapers and magazines typically receive articles written by regime officials that must be published on a daily or weekly basis.[3]

The resulting imagery of her is therefore polarised between these two, neither of which is without major flaws. The positive ideal of Aung San Suu Kyi is invariably the outcome of what brutal actions the regime perpetrates on the Burmese family, and the fact that Aung San Suu Kyi stands up to it by advocating a non-violent struggle while continually placed under house arrest and restrictions by the regime. Nevertheless, as Parenteau points out, ‘biographers searching for facts on her early life have a difficult job’, as she was not an activist, controversial ambitious, and ‘even when she began appearing in public, she played down her own personality while emphasizing her ideas’ (p 130 ). The lack of knowledge about her early life permits a selective view that is highly spiritual and spiritualised only more by the virulent attacks on her character by the regime's version of her life. Also, as I have pointed out in relation to Taylor's work, the NLD has often been academically side-lined, since it is still the military which retains control over government institutions. This has prevented an analysis of the cultural and Buddhist elements underlying its politics.

(c) ILCAA 1999 - Gustaaf Houtman. Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics. ILCAA Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia & Africa Monograph Series 33, Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa, 1999, ISBN 4-87297-748-3, p277/392

My aim, however, is to go beyond this polarisation. My aim is to elicit from among these conflicting views of her role and character some underlying continuities of her politics with that of her father, and with Burmese political values in general. My interest was to identify the cultural institutions and vernacular concepts that might just play a role in the conciliation process which I hope will eventually take place.

John Parenteau

The biography Prisoner for peace: Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's struggle for democracy (Greensboro: Morgan Reynolds, 1994) by John Parenteau was written for ‘the young adult reader’. It uses no original interviews and is entirely based on previously published sources. It deals with her life until early 1994, while she was still under house arrest. In that sense it is out of date and, from our point of view, contributes relatively little.

Nevertheless, it is interesting that Parenteau, as part of his overall view of Aung San Suu Kyi as imprisoned, sketches Ne Win, whose house is in direct line of vision from Aung San Suu Kyi's house, as ‘also imprisoned in his own home’ (p 130). A reflection on this suggests that the idea of imprisonment works both ways, namely to punish and isolate, but also to protect from danger. This adds to the irony when in September 1998 the regime confined to guest houses NLD activists as ‘guests’ rather than prisoners on a large scale. The book also seek to instil in the youth this value of the purity of Aung San Suu Kyi's resolution, for it concludes: ‘regardless of what is to come, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has instilled that courage in her own sons, and in the sons and daughter of Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi has indeed lived the full life’ (p 132).

Parenteau identifies Buddhism as a religion ‘which overcomes worldly problems not by conquering them, but by understanding them and learning to make the best of them’. He also sees Buddhists as ‘tending to be contemplative’ and withdrawn from worldly problems (p 20). He does not, however, deal with either Aung San Suu Kyi's views on Buddhism, or with the role of Buddhism in her politics as a continuum with of past Burmese political values.

Whitney Stewart

Aung San Suu Kyi: fearless voice of Burma (Minneapolis: Lerner Publications, 1997) by Whitney Stewart includes some fresh information gathered during a visit to Burma in 1995 and is presented in the form of interviews conducted with Aung San Suu Kyi and those surrounding her. Though aimed mainly at a young readership, it contains some useful information that I have not encountered elsewhere, including several photographs. As author of the previously published biography of the 14th Dalai Lama there is a little more detail in her treatment of Aung San Suu Kyi's relationship to Buddhism.

Like Parenteau, Stewart also begins with the threat posed by the regime to the family, in particular dealing with the mother-son and husband-wife relationships. Stewart's sketch is all the more commanding as the book begins with Aung San Suu Kyi's dilemma of impending arrest by the authorities while the children were with her and at risk. Also, she draws attention to the manipulation of Aung San Suu Kyi's husband by the SLORC for its own ends, which was to make him come and take his wife back to England, thus solving the problem of what to do with her.

She interprets Aung San Suu Kyi's mother as having taught her children that they should not demand revenge for their father's assassins, for the law of karma means that ‘each person must control his or her own ignorance, hatred, and desire, or suffer the consequences in this life for the next’ (p 25). Of particular interest is the reminiscence of a British journalist, namely that Aung San Suu Kyi was already deeply interested in conversing about politics when she was still living with her mother in India (p 40). She also drew attention to Aung San Suu Kyi spending two years University after high school studying political science at Delhi, which would have been between 1962–64, and that while Ne Win was taking over the country she ‘kept an eye on Burma's problems’. And ‘although some people believed that Suu Kyi had forgotten her country while she lived abroad, those who knew her well understood the depth of Suu Kyi's continued devotion to Burma’ (p 43). Furthermore, she gives examples of Aung San Suu Kyi's maturity for a political role, such as her debate on the issue of her passport with the Burmese officials, and her response to the accusation that she was a spy while in India (p 64).

Interestingly, she sketches the Ne Win regime attempting to intimidate Aung San Suu Kyi as early as the early 1970s while she was on friendly terms with UN Secretary General, who was hated by Ne Win. Furthermore, at that time U Chit Myaing, Burma's former Ambassador to London, claimed that if he had attended her wedding to Michael Aris, a foreigner, ‘I knew that … I would be fired that day’ (p 53).

She makes one error, in calling Aung San Suu Kyi's wedding a ‘Buddhist ceremony’ (p 55). In Burma, people are circumspect about bringing Buddhism into the wedding ceremony, which involves instead a beik-theik saya, an honourable Brahmin. Buddhism is involved only at the level of making a joint offering on a separate occasion to cement one's family relationship through joint merit, thus also securing the conjugal relationship for future lives.

Mikio Oishii

Aung San Suu Kyi's struggle: it's principles and strategy (Penang: Just World Trust) was published in 1997. The author, Mikio Oishii, studied at Bradford School of Peace Studies where he developed the interest ‘in developing a spiritual and moral approach to conflict resolution’ and where he completed a PhD on ‘Conflict resolution and development: a case study of domestic development-related conflicts in Malaysia’ in 1995. The book, the result of a Fellowship from the Just Trust, primarily attempts to advocate reconciliation within Burma within the ASEAN perspective.

It is divided into four chapters: Aung San Suu Kyi's struggle, the essence and principles underlying this struggle, the strategy to bring about democracy and human rights, and the issues and prospects for resolution.

One interesting theoretical idea the author applies is the way democracy movements threaten national boundaries through ‘integrative power’, as proposed by Boulding in Three faces of power (London: Sage Publications, 1989), that is different from ‘threat’ (capacity to coerce or destroy) and ‘exchange power’ (capacity to mobilise resources). Integrative power ‘assumes that every human being has a capacity to respond to such values as truth, love and justice’, and that the democracy movement mobilizes transnationally.[4]

As the preface states, the book aims to show how an Asian leader ‘could harness the traditions and spiritual beliefs found in the country's culture and history and employ them to their fullest potential in the struggle against tyranny’. The book, though of interest in other respects, is ill-informed in its understanding of the spiritual dimension to the democracy struggle, and links it to Hindu Karma Yoga.[5]

Hpe Kan Kaùng

A book entitled What is Aung San Suu Kyi? Whither does Aung San Suu Kyi go? [eAac\Sn\:suûkv\Balµx eAac\Sn\:suûkv\By\lµ] (qtc\:NHc\.sany\zc\:lup\cn\:) was published in 1997. It collects the articles published in Myanma Alìn by Hpe Kan Kaùng [ePkMekac\:], one of the regime's infamous journalists. The cover of this book has a princess, a puppet-on-a-string, carrying a flame. Throughout the book, he puts forward the regime's various theories. Sometimes the strings are pulled by ex-colonial forces, and if we are to go by earlier interpretations, by her English husband.

In this particular volume, however, the strings are pulled by the Communists. It is often the case that the rationale for labelling the opposition is derived from an internal structure already present, and Victor makes the interesting reference to Ne Win as ‘puppet master’, not of Aung San Suu Kyi, but of the regime.[7]

In one particular Burmese dance, women used to carry an oil light [SImI:Kæk\], which was later substituted by a candle attached to a ring on the finger. There is no other Burmese tradition of dance with fire, and the main interpretation has to be that the intention is to depict her as about to torch the country. With 368 pages, it is appended with seven photographs selected to depict her at her most foreign.

The photographs are worthy of analysis since they convey the intentionality behind the book and most clearly communicate the image the regime wishes to project. The first photograph is of her sitting youthfully on the floor in a room with Michael Aris, suggesting love affairs with foreigners in various countries. This is immediately juxtaposed on the same page with a second photograph in which she is surrounded by six young men about which is said that this is ‘Aung San Suu Kyi, photographed with youngsters pretending to

be students, unaware that she lowered the standard of political behaviour’. Photograph three shows her sitting in a lecture room with other NLD leaders, suggesting that she ‘ignorantly destroyed the purity of politics’ [eKt\ASk\Sk\ Niuc\cMer:zat\p¥k\m¥a:Aûka: Aqimµ. påwc\Kµ.mieqa eAac\Sn\:suûkv\]. Photograph four is a wedding photograph of her with Michael Aris in western dress, which says ‘She loves Burma. The wedding of Aung San Suu Kyi, who proclaims to love Burmese culture and traditions, but where do these traditions of Aung San Suu Kyi's wedding ceremony come from?’. Photograph five depicts her arm-in-arm with her two sons with the caption ‘Aung San Suu Kyi who, though a daughter born from two truly Myanmar parents, is unable to live the life of a truly Myanmar mother’. Photograph six shows her embracing US Secretary of State Albright, suggesting that she greatly longed for her. Finally, photograph seven is a photograph of Michael Aris with their son suggesting that he is the ‘go-between’ in Aung San Suu Kyi's liasion with international organizations.

Barbara Victor

The Lady: Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Laureate and Burma's prisoner (London: Faber, 1998) by Barbara Victor, a journalist who normally specialises in the Middle East and has written a biography on Hanan Ashrawi and a work on domestic violence in the United States, is billed as ‘the first full account of one woman's struggle against SLORC’.

This account is an unusual one, for Victor received official permission from the regime to perform her research in Burma, visiting Burma in September 1996 for two months. Perhaps because of her critical attitude to violence in the United States, the regime saw in her someone who might sketch it in a positive light. During her stay she lodged in the guest house owned by the Directorate of Defence Services Intelligence, where she found listening devices in her room. The condition for her visit was that she would not contact Aung San Suu Kyi or members of the ‘political opposition’ and would write a ‘fair and unbiased’ account. The regime expressed the hope that she would ‘tell the world the real story of Myanmar’. Victor, however, interpreted this as meaning that she could not interview whom she wanted and that she would be under severe restrictions, which was of course the case (p 8). She was heavily restricted in her movements, ‘for her own safety’, by Colonel Hla Min, a Defence Ministry official and one of the principal advisers to General Khin Nyunt. In the event, though she had to report daily to Colonel Hla Min, she was sometimes free to see the people she wanted. Victor also subsequently visited Burma through the Thai border.

The advantage of this book is that it actually includes exclusive interviews carried out over two months between September and October 1996 with the SLORC military leaders – with General Khin Nyunt, General Maung Maung , General Able – with General Ne Win's daughter Sanda Win, with Khun Sa, soldiers who guarded Aung San Suu Kyi, the head of the cultural think-tank Khin Maung Nyunt, and businessmen. She also interviewed Tin U.

[1] Aung San Suu Kyi. Jiyuu [Freedom]. Translated by Yumiko Jannson. Tokyo: Shuueisha, 1991; Enzetsu huu [Collected Speeches]. Translated by Ino Kenji. Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo, 1996.

[2] Akazu Mizuha. Aung San Suu Kyi: Tatatkau Kujaku [Aung San Suu Kyi: the fighting peacock]. ‘Super Nobel Peace Prize Story.’ No. 2. Tokyo: Ootoo Shobo, 1994.

[3] Aung Zaw. ‘Suppression of press freedom in Burma gets worse.’ The Nation, 08.11.1998.

[4] Oishii (1997:31–32).

[5] Oishii (1997:21).

[6] Myo Chit. ‘Let's tell the truth’. NLM, May–July 1996.

[7] Victor (1998:175).