London: Myanmar democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi became the first non-head of state to address both houses of Britain's parliament on June 21 in a rare honour she used to ask for help in bringing democracy to the former British colony.
Cutting a tiny figure in parliament's cavernous and historic Westminster Hall, the 67-year-old Nobel Peace laureate and opposition leader received a standing ovation on arrival, introduced as "the conscience of a country and a heroine for humanity".
"We have an opportunity to re-establish true democracy in Burma. It is an opportunity for which we have waited decades," she told a forum previously reserved for world leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama.
"If we do not get things right this time right round, it may be several decades more before a similar opportunity arises again. I would ask Britain, as one of the oldest parliamentary democracies, to consider what it can do to help build the sound institutions needed to build a nascent parliamentary democracy."
Suu Kyi, only the second woman to address both houses of parliament after Queen Elizabeth, is in Britain as part of a 17-day tour of Europe that has at times been emotional and physically demanding.
On June 20, she returned to Oxford, where she once lived with her late husband and two sons before returning to Myanmar, also known as Burma, in 1988.
The visit, to care for her mother, was supposed to be brief, but Suu Kyi, daughter of assassinated Myanmar independence hero Aung San, was swept into her country's political turmoil as the military crushed protests.
The Oxford graduate spent 15 of the next 24 years under house arrest, becoming an icon of non-violent political resistance.
During army rule, Suu Kyi refused offers allowing her to leave the country for fear she would not be allowed to return, costing her the chance to see her children grow up and also the opportunity to be with her husband, Michael Aris, before he died of cancer in 1999.
After nearly half a century of direct military rule, in 2011 the junta gave way to a quasi-civilian government stuffed with former generals, and since then current President Thein Sein has startled the world with his appetite for reforms.
MOST DANGEROUS PERIOD
Thein Sein, a former general, has eased media censorship, released political prisoners and signed peace agreements with ethnic rebels, moves unthinkable just a year earlier.
Suu Kyi was released from house arrest in November 2010 and her National League for Democracy(NLD) party dominated April by-elections, threatening the military-backed ruling party ahead of a general election in 2015.
British Prime Minister David Cameron earlier on Thursday said Thein Sein would travel to London in the coming months for talks on reform, a move Suu Kyi said she supported despite the president's background in Myanmar's former junta.
"I think it's right to invite him. Because we don't want to be shackled by the past. We want to use the past to build a happier future," she said.
The reforms have earned Myanmar the suspension of some U.S. and European sanctions, but Suu Kyi has urged scepticism and on Thursday called on the West to act as "watchdogs" to guard against government reversals on the path to democracy.
"VERY BRITISH"
Suu Kyi was sworn into Myanmar's parliament last month, but she told the audience at Westminster she wished it was less formal and more like Britain's raucous parliamentary system.
"Men are required to wear formal headgear. There is certainly no heckling. I would wish that over time, perhaps, we will reflect the liveliness and relative informality of Westminster," she said, sparking laughter from her audience.
Thoughts of Suu Kyi's father, who was killed when she was two years old, loomed large in her address. At Downing Street, she said she had had a photo taken of her on the spot that her father had been photographed.
"The best known photograph of my father Aung San taken shortly before his assassination in 1947 was of him standing in Downing Street with(former prime minister) Clement Attlee and others with whom he had been discussing Burma's transition to independence," she said.
"A couple of hours ago I was photographed in the same place where my father was photographed together with Prime Minister David Cameron and it is raining. Very British."
Comments
0 comment