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Suu Kyi sympathizes with Myanmar re
Subject: Suu Kyi sympathizes with Myanmar rebels, but condemns taking of embassy
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<font size=4><b>Suu Kyi sympathizes with Myanmar rebels, but condemns
taking of embassy <br>
</font><font size=2>Posted on 10/7/99, 09:38 AM CST.
</font><font size=2 color="#0000FF"><u>Email this story to a
friend</font></u><font size=2 color="#000000">.<br>
</b>Source:
</font><font size=2 color="#0000FF"><b><u>Nando</font></b></u><font size=2 color="#000000">.<br>
Posted by: <b>ShweInc NEWs<br>
</font></b><font size=3>BANGKOK, Thailand (October 7, 1999 8:21 a.m. EDT
http://www.nandotimes.com) - Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has
expressed sympathy with the student rebels who stormed Myanmar's Bangkok
embassy with guns, saying people in her country experience the feeling of
being under siege day-to-day. <br>
<br>
"We understand why these young students felt they had to do
something like this," the Nobel Peace laureate said in a videotaped
interview smuggled out of Myanmar and released Thursday to Associated
Press Television News. <br>
<br>
"It's because of a sense of frustration. It's because they have been
subjected to great injustice and because they want democracy to come to
Burma," she said. Myanmar is also known as Burma. <br>
<br>
Five rebels calling themselves the "Vigorous Burmese Student
Warriors" took 38 hostages, including Myanmar diplomats, at the
nation's mission in Bangkok last week. <br>
<br>
The hostages were released after 26 hours, when Thai authorities agreed
to give the rebels safe passage by helicopter back to Myanmar. <br>
<br>
They were demanding the release of political prisoners in their homeland
and a convening of Parliament in accordance with the result of the 1990
general elections swept by Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy. That
parliament has never been allowed to take power. <br>
<br>
Suu Kyi, whose movements are heavily restricted by the Yangon
authorities, compared the embassy siege to the situation in Myanmar,
which has been ruled by the military since 1962. <br>
<br>
"We have to face this kind of situation in Burma from day to day.
Our people are arrested, harassed, bullied, tortured," she said.
"Why do people put up with it? Because the people who are doing it
have guns in their hands." <br>
<br>
But while Suu Kyi expressed sympathy for the aims of the rebels, she said
her party "cannot support such acts where people with arms (weapons)
force people without arms" to press for political demands. <br>
<br>
"We want to show that the human spirit can prevail over the might of
arms and bring about the change that we want through the strength of our
convictions," she said. <br>
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