Aung San Suu Kyi Freed by Burmese Junta
The New York Times reports:
YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was freed from house arrest on Saturday, setting her on the path to a possible new confrontation with the generals who had kept her out of the public eye for 15 of the past 21 years.
As she stepped to the gate of the lakeside compound where she had been confined, she was greeted by thousands of jubilant supporters, some of them in tears.
Waving and beaming in a long-sleeve pink shirt and a purple sarong, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate could barely be heard over the cheering and chanting.
“We haven’t seen each other for so long, I have so much to tell you,” she said, immediately re-establishing the bond that has made her such a challenge to the nation’s military rulers. It had been more than seven years since her last arrest, a period of near total separation from the world.
Her release, just five days after an election that recast the government with a civilian face, suggested that the generals were confident of their position and ready to face down the devotion she still commands both in her country and abroad.
Indeed, Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, 65, faced an immediate challenge of mending fences within the democratic opposition, which fractured over the question of participating in the election. But the election, which drew accusations of fraud from almost all opposition parties, has also opened a new area of discontent that her lawyers said she planned to exploit.
The scene at the gates of her compound suggested that her popularity remained strong. When the police removed barricades from around her villa on Saturday afternoon, crowds flooded into the street.
Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi spoke only briefly, saying, “If we are united, we can get what we want.” The crowd then broke into the singing of the national anthem.
“She is our mother, she is our mother!” a woman cried.
After someone handed her a flower, the crowd pleaded, “Put it in your hair!”
She obliged.
It was the kind of outpouring she had experienced twice before on earlier releases from house arrest, in 1995 and 2002. Both times she was detained again after testing the limits of her freedom.
