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Aung San Suu Kyi speaks of her self-doubt when, after her motorcade was attacked by pro-government
thugs in 2003 and many supporters were killed or arrested, she survived and was held in relatively good
conditions in a prison bungalow.
She quotes the Ukrainian poet Anna Akhmatova: "No, this is not me. This is somebody else that suffers. I
could never face that and all that happened." She continues: "I felt almost as a physical force the strong
bond that linked those of us who had only our inner resources to fall back on when we were most in need
of strength and endurance."
She also speaks with affection and pride of the supporters who turn up daily to help at the ramshackle
headquarters of her much suppressed and harassed party, the National League for Democracy (NLD),
which won a 1990 landslide election victory, only to see it annulled by the military junta.
"More than once it has been described as the NLD 'cowshed'. Since this remark is usually made with a
sympathetic and often admiring smile, we do not take offence. After all, didn't one of the most influential
movements in the world begin in a cowshed?"
The bravery of these people, she says, is extraordinary. "They pretend to be unafraid as they go about
their duties and pretend not to see that their comrades are also pretending. This is not hypocrisy. This is
courage that has to be renewed consciously from day to day and moment to moment. This is how the
battle for freedom has to be fought until such time as we have the right to be free from the fear imposed
by brutality and injustice."
Aung San Suu Kyi draws comparisons between Burma's plight and the revolution in Tunisia, which was
ignited by a selfless act of defiance by an ordinary person who could no longer tolerate the "unbearable
burden" of injustice. The main difference, she argues, was how free and uncensored communications,
especially via young people's social media networks, allowed the world to know what was happening in
many Arab countries. This was not yet the case in Burma.
Speaking in general of dissenters' attempts to challenge or bring down authoritarian regimes, she says:
"A friend once said she thought the straw that broke the camel's back became intolerable because the
animal had caught a glimpse of itself in a mirror. The realisation dawned that the burden it was bearing
was of unacceptable magnitude and its collapse was in fact a refusal to continue bearing so oppressive a
load.
"In Tunis and in Burma, the deaths of two young men were the mirrors that made the people see how
unbearable were the burdens of injustice and oppression they had to endure.
"Do we envy the people of Tunisia and Egypt? Yes, we do envy them their quick and peaceful transitions.
But more than envy is a sense of solidarity and of renewed commitment to our cause, which is the cause
of all women and men who value human dignity and freedom. In our quest for freedom, we learn to be
free."
Aung San Suu Kyi, who will deliver two of this year's Reith lectures, received the Sakharov prize for
freedom of thought in 1990 and the Nobel peace prize in 1991. Released from house arrest last year, she
is unable to travel outside Burma.
Aung San Suu Kyi's BBC Reith lectures will be broadcast on 28 June and 5 July at 9am on BBC Radio 4.