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Regime 'cut off parting calls by Su



Subject: Regime 'cut off parting calls by Suu Kyi' 

Regime 'cut off parting calls by Suu Kyi'

Tuesday, March 30, 1999

The Sydney Morning Herald

By CRAIG SKEHAN

Burmese authorities cut telephone calls between the democracy leader Ms
Aung San Suu Kyi and her dying husband, the British academic Dr Michael
Aris, in the weeks before his death, a family friend says.

"It was very nasty indeed," the friend said.

"They not only cut off calls from her home in Rangoon, they must have
followed her when she went to phone from other people's homes, including the
residences of foreign diplomats.

"She would be on the line for only one or two minutes, then it would go
dead.
They kept doing that in the days immediately before Michael's death."

The family friend said Ms Suu Kyi burst into tears several times.

Dr Aris, an Oxford academic who died from cancer on Saturday, had not seen
Ms Suu Kyi for more than three years.

She returned to Burma from Britain in 1988 and became leader of the
country's democracy movement.

The Burmese Government refused to grant Dr Aris a visa to travel to Burma to
bid farewell to his wife of 27 years.

Ms Suu Kyi said yesterday that she would not be travelling to Britain for
the
funeral because she feared Burma's military regime would not allow her to
return to Rangoon.

However, on Friday she will make offerings, including food and cloth, to
Buddhist monks as part of rituals to mark the passing of a week since Dr
Aris
died of cancer.

It is fitting that Dr Aris will be given traditional Buddhist rites for it
is the religion
which he loved as well as studied and wrote about.

The foreign policy spokesman for the All Burma Students' Democratic Front,
Mr Aung Naing Oo, said Buddhist precepts held that a person's soul did not
leave the Earth until seven days after his or her death.

"By making offerings, we share merit with the deceased. That means he can
enjoy heavenly peace."

Dr Aris was fascinated by the philosophy, practice and history of Buddhism,
particularly the forms it has taken in remote parts of the Himalayas.

The Burmese say it is a sin to deny a dying person his or her last wish.

However, despite the odium of doing so, the military regime refused to
buckle

to concerted international diplomatic pressure to grant Dr Aris a visa.

The National League for Democracy justice spokesman, Thein Oo, said in
Bangkok yesterday that the way Ms SuuKyi had carried on, despiteher
husband's death, enhanced the esteem in which she was held.

"She refused to go to see Michael because she had to stay with her fellow
Burmese.

"Everybody is suffering because of the military regime and she is suffering
painfully. But she knows that one day we will win."

Thein Oo said news of Dr Aris's death was filtering out to the Burmese
public,
including through foreign shortwave radio broadcasts, despite a dearth of
coverage in the officially controlled media.

A spokesman for the Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Downer, said
it was very disappointing that Dr Aris was refused permission to visit Burma
before his death.

Mr Downer hoped that even if Ms Suu Kyi did not go to Britain, her sons,
Alexander and Kim, in their 20s, would be allowed to visit Burma.

"There are compassionate grounds for that to be done, if that is what they
choose to do," the spokesman said.