Aung San Suu Kyi Warned to Keep Mouth Shut

“Peace demands the most heroic labor and the most difficult sacrifice. It demands greater heroism than war. It demands greater fidelity to the truth and a much more perfect purity of conscience.” ~ Thomas Merton

29 June 2011 – Aung San Suu Kyi is about to go on tour and asaszhe has been warned by the Burmese (Myanmar) government to censor her anti-government stance when delivering her upcoming addresses. Suu Kyi had been placed under  house arrest by the repressive military regime for almost 14 out of the past 20 years until her release late last year.

Born on 19 June 1945, the Burmese opposition politician is the former General Secretary of the National League for Democracy. In the 1990 general election,  Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party won 59% of the national votes and 80% (392 of 492) of the seats in Parliament, leading some to claim that this implied Suu Kyi was elected Prime Minister. However, at the time of the elections she had been detained under house arrest thus invalidating this implication.

In addition to the government’s warning to Suu Kyi, it also refused entry to the actress Michelle Yeoh who is portraying the pro-democracy leader in a forthcoming film. Yeoh, who has been filming the biopic in neighboring Thailand, was detained upon arriving at Rangoon’s airport on 22 June and sent out the on the next flight.

The 48-year-old Malaysian actor, a veteran of Hong Kong action movies is well-known for her roles in ‘Memoirs of a Geisha,’ ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon’ and in the James Bond film ‘Tomorrow Never Dies.’  Although, Yeoh had previously been allowed into the country according to the Reuters an unnamed official was quoted as saying “she was deported on the same day because she is on a blacklist,” according to the Reuters news service.

Aung San Suu Kyi was the recipient of the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and was subsequently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 1992 she was also awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by the Government of India.

Yeoh’s film, titled ‘The Lady’ after Aung San Suu Kyi’s nickname in Burma, focuses heavily on the personal sacrifices the politician has been obliged to make. Directed by Luc Besson, it charts her marriage to the British academic and Tibet scholar Michael Aris, played in the film by David Thewlis. Aris died in 1999 in England while Suu Kyi was still in Burma under house arrest.  She was not able to be with him nor their two children during his final moments.

The film, due for release in October, has also been shot in the UK and France.