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Australia: Suu Kyi's ill husband fi



Subject: Australia: Suu Kyi's ill husband fights for last visit

Suu Kyi's ill husband fights for last visit

By CRAIG SKEHAN
BANGKOK, THURSDAY

The British husband of the Burmese opposition leader Ms Aung San Suu Kyi is
seriously ill with cancer and seeking a visa from the country's military
Government to visit his wife.

Mr Michael Aris, an Oxford academic, was admitted to hospital with prostate
cancer that has spread to his spine and lungs.

The Burmese Government said today it was reviewing his visa request, but
coldly offered an alternative. ``The Government of Myanmar (Burma) suggests
that Ms Suu Kyi, who is in perfect health, travel to England to respond to
her husband's dying wish to see her,'' it said. ``She has so far refused to
go.''

It is widely believed that Ms Suu Kyi would not be allowed to return to
Burma from a trip abroad.

Australia joined the international diplomatic push to help Mr Aris, who has
not been granted a visa to enter Burma since Christmas 1995.

The ambassador to Burma, Ms Lyndel McLean, personally raised the issue with
senior representatives of the ruling military junta. ``Our view is that a
visa should be issued on humanitarian grounds,'' she said.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Alexander Downer, said Australia was
disturbed by the visa delay. Appeals for a visa for Mr Aris have also been
made by Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, the United Nations and the
Sultan of Brunei.

In Britain, a family friend said Mr Aris was not fit enough to travel at the
moment. ``Michael is desperate to get in to see her to say goodbye for the
last time. But he would have to be accompanied by a nurse and might not even
survive the journey.''

Ms Suu Kyi, the bold and charismatic leader of Burma's main opposition
party, the National League for Democracy, is the daughter of the
independence hero, Aung Sang.

She met Mr Aris as a student in Britain in the 1960s. When they married, she
made him promise he would not stand in her way should she feel she had to
return to Burma.

She was about to begin her postgraduate thesis in London in 1988 when her
mother suffered a stroke and she returned to nurse her.


Later that year she was thrust into the political limelight by her father's
name as a mass movement for democracy gathered pace.

The democracy uprising was bloodily crushed by the military, which later
ignored the National League for Democracy's landslide win in the 1990

general election.

Ms Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest for six years.

Mr Aris has long been used by Burma's military rulers to attack Ms Suu Kyi.
The state media says Ms Suu Kyi insulted Burmese by marrying a man from the
former colonial power. Official commentaries refer to Ms Suu Kyi as a
bogadaw, a derogatory term for the wife of an Englishman.

``The Government is continually making derogatory comments about Suu Kyi and
the National League for Democracy. They see it as part of the game plan," Ms
McLean said.

(The Age)

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