KEY POINTS:
Why are we asking this now? Yesterday marked the 62nd birthday of the pro-democracy leader and Nobel Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, a woman who has spent much of the last two decades either imprisoned or living under house arrest in Myanmar at the command of one of the most repressive regimes in the world.
Today she will have spent a total of 11 years and 239 days (4254 days) in detention. She lives in isolation in a peeling lakeside villa on University Ave in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, and visits to her are strictly controlled. Her phone line has been cut and her post is routinely intercepted. Her current period of detention began on May 30, 2003, when a convoy she was travelling in was attacked by a militia backed by the regime. Though she escaped she was imprisoned by the authorities. Around 100 of her supporters were reportedly killed. Why is Suu Kyi so loved by the Burmese people and so hated by the regime? "The Lady", as she is widely known, embodies the struggle of the Burmese people in the face of adversity. Her father, General Aung San, negotiated Burma's independence from Britain in 1945 before being assassinated.
In 1988, a month after up to 3000 democracy activists were massacred by the Government, Suu Kyi established the National League for Democracy. In 1990 the regime called a general election. Suu Kyi's party won convincingly, securing 392 of 485 seats, but the authorities ignored the result and refused to hand over power. That year she was awarded the Sakharov Prize, and in 1991, the Nobel Peace Prize, the award being collected by her two sons, Alexander and Kim, in her absence.
The regime has routinely fabricated a range of charges against her. It even accused the Oxford-educated Suu Kyi of illegally avoiding paying tax when she spent the US$1.3 million ($1.72 million) award money from the Nobel Prize to establish a health and education fund for Burmese people. What has Suu Kyi's life in detention been like?
Her life in and out of jail and at No 54 University Ave as well as her decision to continue fighting for democracy - the regime has offered to release her if she would leave the country - have carried a huge personal price. Her husband, Michael Aris, an Oxford professor, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997 and was refused a visa for Myanmar. Suu Kyi was faced with an agonising decision: leave Myanmar knowing that she would never be allowed back in, or stay and leave her sick husband without her. She chose to stay in Myanmar, and Aris died in March 1999. Their two sons live in Britain.
Last month, Myanmar's regime - the State Peace and Development Council - announced that Suu Kyi's period of detention, due to expire at the end of last month, had been extended. At that time the United Nations Working Group said it believed her detention was in breach of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. How has the regime survived in the face of the democracy movement? Brutality, secrecy and the failure of most countries to cease investing in and trading with Myanmar. Despite calls from Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy for countries to impose sanctions, only the United States has imposed a blanket ban on investment. The European Union has imposed much more limited, targeted sanctions, which campaigners say are ineffective. Violence and secrecy also shore up the regime. In November 2005, the Government almost overnight moved its capital from Yangon to a new specially created city called Naypyidaw, hundreds of kilometres away in the jungle. Campaigners believe this was done to locate the military closer to the Shan, Chin and Karen communities, against which the regime is accused of widespread repression. What can be done to influence the regime? Campaigners say the key to changing Myanmar lies with regional powers India, China and Russia - all of which have considerable financial and trade links with the regime, offer political support, and supply it with weapons. In January, China and Russia were condemned for vetoing a UN Security Council resolution requiring the restoration of democracy to Myanmar. India has been widely condemned for supporting the regime, in particular for its involvement in the massive Shwe gas project, which includes a pipeline to India. Campaigners say the project will be the regime's largest source of revenue, providing it with an average of US$580 million a year for 20 years, a total of nearly US$12 billion. Will Suu Kyi still be under detention on her next birthday? The regime shows no signs of faltering. India's Myanmar policy, say campaigners, does not help: it is dictated not by human rights but by India's economic interests. India hopes to counter the increasing Chinese influence in Myanmar and wants co-operation from the regime to tackle insurgents in the north-east.
Zoya Phan, campaign co-ordinator at the Burma Campaign UK, said: "India should be ashamed of what they have done, supplying money and weapons to one of the world's most brutal regimes."
The Secretary-General of the Association of South-East Asian Nations said that sanctions against Myanmar would have little impact because China and India would continue to support it. At the same time, Suu Kyi appears no more willing to give up her struggle for democracy, though questions are repeatedly asked about her health - she suffers from high blood-pressure and is permitted to receive visits from doctors only once every two months. What is Suu Kyi's message to the world? In a speech smuggled out of Myanmar in 1997, she wrote: "The cause of liberty and justice finds sympathetic responses in far reaches of the globe. Thinking and feeling people everywhere, regardless of colour or creed, understand the deeply rooted human need for a meaningful existence ...
"Those fortunate enough to live in societies where they are entitled to full political rights can reach out to help the less fortunate in other parts of our troubled planet. Young women and young men setting forth to leave their mark on the world might wish to cast their eyes beyond their own frontiers to the shadowlands of lost rights ... Please use your liberty to promote ours."
- INDEPENDENT
