Suu Kyi fails to attend Martyrs' Day ceremony
Suu Kyi fails to attend Martyrs' Day ceremony
Agence France-Presse, Yangon
Detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi was missing on Monday
from a ceremony marking her father's assassination 57 years ago
as her party launched a stinging attack on the country's
military-run regime.
The National League for Democracy (NLD) used the Martyrs' Day
anniversary to criticize the "dishonest" regime for its continued
hold on power despite the opposition party's landslide election
victory in 1990.
"Ignoring the electorate and holding onto power on the grounds
of such irrelevant excuses as a lack of national stability, lack
of a constitution or a sense of patriotism is dishonest," it said
in a five-page statement.
"The situation in the country is such that national unity,
including ethnic unity, is in a state of chaos."
Suu Kyi failed to attend the Martyrs' Day ceremony during her
previous periods of house arrest under the junta and during a
period of freedom last year shunned the event despite receiving
an official invitation. Her party said she would never attend
until she was properly free.
Her elder brother Aung San Oo has also been regularly invited
and showed up last year but did not appear on Monday.
"Aung San Oo will not be here for the July 19 ceremony and I
shall be laying the wreath at the Martyr's Mausoleum on his
behalf," close family friend U Nan Nwe told AFP.
The 15-minute official ceremony at a specially-built Mausoleum
included the raising of the national flag to half-mast, a two-
minute silence and buglers playing the last post.
Officials from the junta and family members of those killed
with Aung San then laid wreaths.
The NLD later held its own ceremony at an event attended by
foreign diplomats and party activists when they issued their own
stinging rebuke of the regime and its so-called road map to
democracy.
The NLD is boycotting the first of those seven steps, the
holding of a national convention to help write a constitution,
because it says the process is a sham.
The failure to allow the NLD to rule, despite their election
victory, led to international trade sanctions that have plunged
the country into poverty.
In a separate development, Myanmar's military-run regime on
Monday blamed its former colonial master Britain for all its
woes, from HIV/AIDS (Human Imuunodeficiency Virus/Acquired Immune
Deficiency Syndrome) to economic ruin, despite winning
independence more than 50 years ago.
From constitutional crises to more than four decades of ethnic
feuding, the junta that ruled the country since 1962 firmly laid
the blame at the door of the British.
"The government of Myanmar urges London to discard its
colonial mentality and complex 'Britain knows best' policy in the
promotion of democracy in Myanmar," it said in a statement.
"The government together with the people of Myanmar is very
much disappointed to learn that even after the British troops
left Myanmar more than 50 years ago, Britain continues in its
attempt to deny Myanmar its sovereign right to shape its own
nations's destiny."
Britain has been one of the biggest critics of the military
regime over its stifling of democracy and the continued detention
of Suu Kyi.