Doves fly free but Suu Kyi captive for 60th birthday

WORLDWIDE celebrations to mark the 60th birthday of detained pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi kicked off yesterday, with supporters releasing doves and holding a modest religious ceremony in the Burmese capital, Yangon.

A living symbol of non-violent resistance to oppression, Ms Suu Kyi is being feted around the globe by sympathisers ranging from social activists to pop stars and world leaders on her birthday, which is also being used as an occasion to renew long-standing calls for her release.

While Suu Kyi - who has spent almost 10 of the last 16 years in confinement - remained locked up at her dilapidated residence in the capital, members of her National League for Democracy (NLD) party gathered at its headquarters several miles away.

Sixty-one doves were freed to mark the beginning of Suu Kyi’s 61st year, NLD member Phyu Phyu said. Several party members gathered at Yangon’s famous Shwedagon pagoda to pray for her health and freedom.

The party’s women’s wing, as in years past, is celebrating her birthday as “Myanmar Women’s Day”.

In leafy Yangon, where roadblocks around Ms Suu Kyi’s lakeside home keep away everybody except for her doctor, around 500 people met at the run-down headquarters of her NLD party.

After a ceremony to raise money for other political prisoners, such as Suu Kyi’s party number two, Tin Oo, members released ten pigeons and 60 helium-filled balloons into the air to chants of “Long live Aung San Suu Kyi”.

Across the road, dozens of plainclothes security policemen looked on, taking photographs and recording the event with video cameras.

“I miss her every second,” 40-year-old sympathiser Ma Nyein Nyein said. “I still have a brother in prison. I pray for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners, including Uncle U Tin Oo every day.”

In Bangkok, the centre of operations for Burmese exiles and refugees over the years until a Thai police crackdown on anti-junta dissent last year, the atmosphere was muted.

Around 100 policemen took up positions outside the Burmese embassy to ward off protests that never happened. Instead, 60 people held a silent 61-minute vigil at a university campus.

There were similar scenes in Indonesia, itself a democracy following the ousting of dictator Suharto in 1998, where actresses, politicians and human rights workers held poetry readings in honour of ‘The Lady’.

Whatever the gestures, whatever their volume, they are unlikely to make any difference to a government which appears immune to international pressure.