Suu Kyi urges China’s leaders to allow dissent

BURMA pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi urged China’s Communist leaders yesterday to be more open and tolerant amidst a heavy clampdown on dissidents and government critics in recent months.

“My message to China’s leaders will be very simple,” said Suu Kyi who was released after years of house arrest last November by the country’s military junta.

“China is a great country, the Chinese people are a great people with a marvellous and long history behind them. They can afford to take more steps, they can afford to be daring, they can afford to allow room for all kinds of opinions,” said Suu Kyi during a video conference with an international audience at the University of Hong Kong.

With Burma subject to widespread international sanctions, China has remained its biggest economic and political ally and has maintained a no-strings

investment policy.

The former British colony is widely considered to have one of the world’s most autocratic governments despite releasing Suu Kyi and holding elections last year widely criticised as a sham.

Uprisings across the Arab world have made Chinese authorities jittery about any sign of instability and several prominent dissidents have been detained in recent months.

Suu Kyi’s comments come days before the 22nd anniversary of a bloody crackdown in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, when Chinese troops were ordered to fire on pro-democracy demonstrators.

The previous year, the military in Burma crushed a student-led protest movement.

While any public commemoration of June 4 is banned in mainland China, pro-democracy groups in Hong Kong are gearing up for a candlelight vigil that organisers expect to draw an especially large turnout.

Suu Kyi said she intended to make a trip around Burma in the next month or two to meet supporters, but she declined to give details.

* Reuters