One Year On: Has Aung San Suu Kyi’s Release Changed Burma?

One Year On: Has Aung San Suu Kyi’s Release Changed Burma? (VOA Henry Rodgewell Nov. 8, 2011)


Twelve months after Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest, a new government has begun talking to some of its critics. ActionAid, a charity working in Burma, says the opportunity to advance reforms should be seized. But outside the major cities, ethnic minority groups say the suppression of their people is only getting worse.
It’s a year since opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi was released from seven years of house arrest - to rapturous cheers from thousands of supporters who had gathered outside her Rangoon home.

Her opposition to Burma’s military rulers had seen her spend 15 of the previous 21 years in detention.
The nominally civilian government has opened a tentative dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi. Some observers say this offers the best chance in decades to advance democratic reform.

British actress Emma Thompson recently traveled to Burma with the charity ActionAid, and met Aung San Suu Kyi. “She’s very cautious but optimistic," she said. "The phrase she used to me about what was happening now was, ‘it is very important that we do not proceed with indecent haste.'"

Thompson was left with optimistic impressions from her visit.

“I did see poverty of course," she said. "Deep, wrenching poverty. But I did not feel that there was a generation of people there too scared to move forward and inhabit the space that appears to be appearing. I felt that there was a dialogue, a genuine dialogue beginning to start between a very difficult government and the people.”

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