Suu Kyi free: Joyous moment eclipses years of anger

As dusk gathered, the order came by cellphone to take down the barricades.

The roadblock that for years had blocked University Ave, cutting Aung San Suu Kyi off from her people, was no more.

As the police attempted to pull down the barbed wire, the crowd overwhelmed them, seven years of anger and generations of frustration forgotten in one joyous moment.

The police, long feared as the front line of Myanmar's brutal security apparatus, tried to order the crowd back, but were helpless to do so.

In longyis and sandals, Suu Kyi's supporters ran the 400m to the front gate of her home. One woman, a portrait of "The Lady" pinned to her shirt, wept as she ran, calling out her name. They pushed against the ancient, sagging bamboo fence, singing and chanting, "Long live Aung San Suu Kyi."

Despite years of house arrest, and the long hours waiting for the release order to finally come, inside her lakeside compound her inner circle were not prepared. They begged the crowd to sit and to be patient while they found something for their leader to stand on.

After 10 minutes, she appeared, in a lavender top, only her face and shoulders visible above the fence. The crowd roared. Here was the excitement, the enthusiasm of the Burmese people, so palpably missing from last week's election, embodied in a smiling 65-year-old woman, standing on a chair at her front gate, with flowers in her hair.

Over the noise of several thousand people pressing against the fence, Myanmar's most eloquent democracy campaigner could barely be heard. It was a full five minutes before the crowd allowed her even the chance to speak.

"There is a time to be quiet and a time to talk. People must work in unison. Only then can we achieve our goal," she said to huge, sustained, applause.

- OBSERVER