It is time to free Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Burma’s democratic movement, who remains under house arrest

When Damien Rice visited Burma last year with US musician Ani DiFranco, he met a number of ex-political prisoners and saw the scars of their torture. He visited a clinic where they make plastic limbs to replace real legs, blown off by landmines. And he spent time in a refugee camp in neighbouring Thailand, home to some of the two million people who’ve fled Burma, and the brutal military regime there.
Moved as he was by these experiences, what affected Rice most profoundly during his stay was a dawn visit that he made with Di Franco to a small village – reached via river boat, and guarded front and rear by men with machine guns – hidden deep in the Burmese jungle.
“These were people who were forced to move from where they lived, because of the risk of attack from the army,” says Rice, “and they’d set up this temporary home in the jungle.”
Hugh Baxter of Burma Action Ireland explains the context.
“Apart from the refugees who’ve fled to safe countries, there are a million internally displaced Burmese people constantly on the move because their villages are being attacked. It’s common for the army to go into a village, burn it down, kill all the men, rape the women, and press-gang the children into the army.
“It’s just horrific what’s going on there,” he adds. “Burma’s regime has recruited up to 70,000 child soldiers, far more than any other country. Its instituted a nationwide system of modern-day slavery, and imprisoned over 1,400 political activists.”
“What really got me were the children of the village,” Damien Rice continues. “These tiny, beautiful, gorgeous, amazing kids, many of them orphans. They sang songs for us. Looking into the eyes of some of the children, it really hit me that tomorrow, the army could just come in and pillage them.
“It wasn’t till we were on the way back that I realised all the fear and anxiety that I had about visiting the place. But I was only there for a few hours, and then I could just go, and be away from the danger – but these little children had to stay. It was really weird leaving them behind.”
Taking up the tale, Hugh Baxter gives a potted history of Burma.
“The country gained independence from Britain in 1947,” he explains. “The independence movement there was actually modelled on the Irish struggle; at the time, books on and by Michael Collins, De Valera, James Connolly and Arthur Griffiths were all in wide circulation in Burmese translation.
“From ’47 to ’62 there was a quasi democracy – then the military took over, and the country’s been under a military dictatorship ever since. In 1988 there was an uprising, which was brutally suppressed. During that time, an amazingly iconic woman called Aung San Suu Kyi [pronounced Ong Sawn Sue Chee] became a focal point for the democratric opposition, and quickly became the leader for what was to become the National League for Democracy. The military organised an election in 1990, and Suu Kyi led her party to overwhelming victory, winning about 80% of the seats.
“Then the military refused to recognise the result of the election. They incarcerated Suu Kyi in 1991, and she’s been under house arrest ever since. She has two sons who she hasn’t seen for years. Even her family are unable to find out what sort of conditions she’s living in right now.”
Suu Kyi is the world’s only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient. Her birthday this June 19th has inspired the ‘Free Aung San Suu Kyi 60th Birthday Campaign’ (modelled on 1988’s ‘Mandela At 70’ campaign), a global initiative incorporating scores of events from around the world, including the release of Damien Rice’s single ‘Unplayed Piano’ and solo concerts in London and Paris in June.
“I was quite impacted by the whole Burma experience,” says Rice, “so when the US Campaign For Burma asked me would I be interestested in doing a show in New York with Ani Di Franco and David Byrne, in aid of Aung San Suu Kyi, I said yeah, absolutely. But they had to pull out, so it looked like I was going to be doing the show on my own, which I was fine with. But then I asked the campaign, why am I doing this show? If it was to make money, I’d rather just give the money …
“They said that creating awareness was more important just then. So I asked, what do you think is the most powerful way for me to do that? And they said, you could write a song for Suu Kyi. That’s what Lisa Hannigan and I did with ‘Unplayed Piano’.
“I wanted the song to be universal, personal, and to come from a human and emotional, not a political, point of view. I wanted it to be an expression of loss, but with a huge amount of hope in that loss.
“Suu Kyi has so much potential that just hasn’t been realised. The majority of people in Burma want her as their leader. She seems like somebody that the world could benefit from, if she were let out. And she has asked people outside Burma, ‘Please, use your liberty to promote ours’.
“I see it on a very simple level. The country asked for this woman and the army didn’t allow it. I don’t think that should be happening. I’m excited, because I feel there’s a potential solution, and Suu Kyi is it. She’s the unplayed piano.”
www.actionburma.com
www.burmaactionireland.org