*Imagine never being allowed to hold your new grandchild, or being prevented from saying goodbye to your dying husband. Bo Zaw Gyi meets Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, where she’s finally been freed from house arrest.**
To the world she is a freedom fighter, a woman brave enough to stand up to the Burmese military junta. To her countrymen she is known as The Lady, a name they whisper in hushed, reverential tones.
In pictures: 2010 — the year in review
But 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, 65, is also a wife and mother, who has spent 15 of the last 21 years under house arrest, staring at the same decaying walls, while her people suffered and her family lived in exile far away from her.
In November 2010, we all cheered when she was granted liberty again, and her supporters flocked to her home when the army removed the barricades.
When The Weekly visited just days later, gardeners were busy cleaning up the lawn of her weathered colonial mansion. “Do come in and sorry for the state of this place, we’re having a bit of clean-up,” she says, with the British accent she acquired from many years living in England.
For such a petite woman, she has a commanding, no-nonsense presence. Her poise and ramrod-straight back are hints of the determination and discipline that have made her famous.
She takes me to the drawing room downstairs, which overlooks Inya Lake; a room that for so long has been Suu Kyi’s prison. It is panelled in teak and is sparsely furnished but for the guitar and drum kit used by a local youth band. A portrait of her father, General Aung San, who was assassinated in the same year – 1947 – he negotiated Burma’s independence from Britain, hangs on the wall.
“Oh it wasn’t all that difficult,” she says of her house arrest with typical modesty, before reminding me of the estimated 2,100 political prisoners being held in Burmese prisons. “I was simply sitting in my home and I’ve never been one for going out a lot.”
In pictures: 2010 — the year in review
Suu Kyi filled her days with reading – novels and poetry; music – she plays piano; listening to the radio up to six hours per day – mainly the BBC. “I had to know the news each day because no one could come and tell me,”
Read more of this story in the January issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
Your say: What do you think of this story? What do you think Suu Kyi will do next? Share with us below.
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
