Suu Kyi and Aris kept apart until his death

The Jakarta Post's Asia correspondent Harvey Stockwin reports on the background to the death of Aung San Suu Kyi's husband, Tibetan scholar Michael Aris, of prostate cancer, in England, a tragedy which the Myanmar military regime, to ASEAN'S shame tried to manipulate to get rid of Myanmar's leading dissident and nationalist symbol.

HONG KONG (JP): Oxford University lecturer and Tibetan scholar Michael Aris died March 27 in a hospital in England, thereby making Myanmar's leading dissident, and winner of the last general election, Aung San Suu Kyi, a bereft and grieving but still determined widow, under continued de facto house arrest in her family home in Yangon.

Aris' death not merely ends a grim battle with prostate cancer, but also ends an equally grim confrontation with Myanmar's repressive military junta which has denied him a visa to visit his wife since Christmas 1995, and has particularly refused to permit one last visit to Yangon over the last few months, once it became clear that Aris was a dying man.

Most of all, the premature death of Aris, who was a specialist in Tibetan culture, brings to an equally premature end a 27-year love affair built upon the understanding, by both husband and wife, that Suu Kyi's first duty was to the people of Myanmar, born of being the daughter of nationalist hero Aung San.

Clearly indicating her grief and sadness, Suu Kyi was able to issue a poignant two-paragraph through foreign diplomats last Saturday, which said:

"On behalf of my sons Alexander and Kim, as well as on my own behalf, I want to thank all those around the world who have supported my husband during his illness and have given me and my family love and sympathy.

"I am so fortunate to have such a wonderful husband who has always given me the understanding I needed. Nothing can take that away from me".

Throughout Aris' recent illness, the military junta played an utterly cynical game, trying to use Aris' terminal affliction, and his desire for one last visa, into a means to get Aung San Suu Kyi to leave the country, thereby making it easier for the authoritarian regime to conclude their ongoing suppression of her National League for Democracy (NLD). The NLD clearly won the 1990 election which the military themselves organized. That result has never been honored.

This maneuvering over a visa culminated on March 26, when an Army officer conveyed to Suu Kyi that the government was willing to let her go to London to see her husband, providing she did not politicize the trip.

There was no guarantee that she would be allowed to return home to Myanmar. Understandably Suu Kyi quickly showed the officer to the door.

The Myanmar government's gesture was its belated and inadequate response to pressure from all over the world and, as the military regime must have known, was made as Aris lay at death's door.

On March 28, in the wake of Aris' death, the Myanmar government once more offered all help to allow Suu Kyi to visit England for her husband's funeral but again refrained from giving a categorical assurance that she would be allowed to return.

The crucial point in all this maneuvering was that while the Myanmar military rulers have made a great show of allowing Suu Kyi to visit England, Aris himself never made such a request, but asked only for a visa so that he could visit his wife in Myanmar.

Even when they were married in 1972, Aung San Suu Kyi made it plain that, one day, her commitment to her nation might come before her commitment to her husband.

"I only ask one thing" she wrote to Aris, "that should my people need me, you would help me do my duty by then".

In a moving letter, written before their marriage in January 1972 Aung San Suu Kyi accurately anticipated the future of their relationship:

"Would you mind very much should such a situation ever arise?

How probable it is I do not know but the possibility is there.

"Sometimes I am beset by fears that circumstances and national considerations might tear us apart just when we are so happy in each other that separation would be a torment.

"And yet such fears are so futile and inconsequential: if we love and cherish each other as much as we can while we can, I am sure love and compassion will triumph in the end".

In the wake of the death of her mother, and the savage Yangon Massacre in 1988, Suu Kyi felt she was needed by her long- oppressed people, and her husband unquestioningly supported her in that decision.

Since then, Aris himself has never asked Suu Kyi to come to England. The only time they were occasionally together was when he was able to go to Myanmar. The last time was Christmas 1995, when Aris took a statement of Suu Kyi's out of the country for her, for which he was denied any more visas, even during this last final illness.

While some observers wonder if Suu Kyi might not be able to conduct an even more formidable campaign of opposition from exile in Bangkok or London, there is no evidence that she has even considered this option.

Her suspicions that the military might exclude her, were she ever to leave the country, are well founded. For several years now, the military has been trying to alter the constitution, so as to make anyone married to a foreigner incapable of holding a position of political leadership.

Earlier, too, the regime refused to renew her two sons Myanmar passports, making them, too, dependent on visas to visit their mother.

It may even be that Aris was unable to have one last conversation with his wife. Reports from Yangon indicate that Suu Kyi's ability to make international telephone calls has also been denied.

Faced with the sheer inhumanity of the Myanmar governments' response to the illness of Aris, every ASEAN government should hang its head in shame.

Circumstances and national considerations did indeed tear Aung San Suu Kyi and Michael Aris apart. Their final separation must have been more than a torment.

But Michael Aris helped Aung San Suu Kyi do her duty, as she saw it, until the end.

Window: The military junta played an utterly cynical game, trying to use Aris' terminal affliction, and his desire for one last visa, into a means to get Aung San Suu Kyi to leave the country...