Women's Power, Imprisoned Today in Burma
Bad news from Burma for democracy, justice and peace. Nobel Peace Laureate Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was taken from her home, imprisoned in a notorious Rangoon jail and charged with violating the terms of her house arrest—because an American man (perhaps an activist, motivated a sense of justice; perhaps a bizarre stooge, planted by Burma's military rulers) swam across a lake to reach her house for an unscheduled, unwanted "visit". When he arrived, he was immediately asked to leave. The next day, workers were filmed building a lakefront fence behind Suu Kyi's house. There was an extraordinary, maddening irony that the news about Suu Kyi reached Guatemala on the very day when most participants in the Women Redefining Democracy conference were leaving for home. The same day that the four Nobel women peace laureates here were meeting over lunch to plan the next stage of NWI's work. Around the lunch table were a few empty seats. One should have been filled by Suu Kyi.
At the conference venue in Antigua, large photos of Suu Kyi reminded us that she, too, is an essential part of the struggle for deep democracy—one who remains sequestered and silenced by the hard men who continue to rule her country. News reports say Suu Kyi will "stand trial" next week, but there's no such thing as a fair trial in Burma. Under their terms of her detention, she was to have been released May 27th from yet another term of house arrest. But that looks extremely unlikely now. In fact, she could get a prison term of three to five years due to the swimming man. It's clear that Burma's military rulers are terrified of Suu Kyi. I suspect it's of her power—a woman's power—to lead. How else to explain their cruelty? Their mania? Their retrogressive actions?
It's unsettling, of course. But, also, in its own way, encouraging. If the iron-fisted rulers of Burma are that scared of a woman leader, imagine what those women leaders can—no, will—do. The presence of two extraordinary and young Burmese women activists in Antigua this week offered a sense of what's to come. (Even today, not only men run Burma. Women, I've been assured by a colleague who lived in Rangoon, are fairly well represented in the civil service.) In the meantime, all efforts are needed to help free Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from the Insein prison, and from all manner of detention. Now.
