lonely-planet-myanmar-burma-11-edition

356AUNG SAN SUU KYITHE SWIMMERFor an example of how a visitor’s actions, well-meaning or otherwise, can affect a localin Myanmar, you need look no further than John Yettaw’s unauthorised meeting withAung San Suu Kyi. On 3 May 2009, the 53-year-old Vietnam vet, retired bus driver andMormon strapped on homemade flippers and paddled his way across Inya Lake to thedemocracy leader’s home; he had attempted a meeting the year before, but had beenblocked that time by her two housekeepers. This time, however, Suu Kyi took pity on theexhausted American and allowed him to stay, even though she knew such a visit violatedthe terms of her house arrest.Speaking to a reporter for the New Yorker in 2010, she said ‘I felt I could not hand overanybody to be arrested by the authorities when so many of our people had been arrestedand not been given a fair hearing.’ When he left two days later, Yettaw was fishedout the lake by government agents. Following a trial, he was sentenced to seven yearsin prison, only to be released a few days later to return to the US. Aung San Suu Kyi andher two housekeepers, meanwhile, were sentenced to three years of hard labour, commutedto 18 months of house arrest – sufficient to keep the NLD leader out of the wayduring the 2010 elections.her, acting as her proxies to accept from the European Parliament inJanuary 1991 the Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought, and the NobelPeace Prize in October of the same year.As the international honours stacked up (the Simón Bolivar Prize fromUnesco in June 1992; the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understandingin May 1995), Suu Kyi maintained her strength and spiritsby meditating, reading (in Letters from Burma she writes how she lovesnothing more than relaxing over a detective story), exercising, practicingpiano, and listening to news on the radio. From May 1992 until January1995 she was also permitted regular visits from her husband and sons.Five Years of FreedomMuch to the joy of her supporters at home and abroad, as well as herfamily, the government released Suu Kyi from house arrest in July 1995.She was allowed to travel outside Yangon with permission, which wasrarely granted. During her subsequent five years of freedom, she wouldtest the authorities several times with varying degrees of success.The last time she would see her husband was in January 1996. A yearlater he was diagnosed with prostate cancer, which would prove to beterminal. Despite appeals from the likes of Pope John Paul II and UNSecretary General Kofi Anan, the generals refused to allow Aris a visa tovisit his wife, saying that Suu Kyi was free to leave the country to tend tohim. Aris died in an Oxford hospital on 27 March 1999, his 53rd birthday;over the telephone he had insisted Suu Kyi remain in Burma where manypolitical prisoners and their families also relied on her support.The following decade was marked by more extended periods of housearrest punctuated by shorter spells of freedom. A couple of intercessionsby UN special envoys resulted in talks with military leaders and the releaseof hundreds of political prisoners, but no real progress on the politicalfront – nor release for the woman who had become the world’s mostfamous prisoner of conscience.Run-Up to Elections & ReleaseOn 22 September 2007, at the height of the failed ‘Saffron Revolution’(p 304 ), the barricades briefly came down along University Ave, allowingthe protestors to pass Aung San Suu Kyi’s house. In a powerful scene, laterrecounted by eyewitnesses and captured on mobile-phone footage, the