Burmese pro-democracy movement pins its hopes on the Sarkozys to liberate Aung San Suu Kyi
Can Cecilia Sarkozy, wife of the French President, follow up her spectacular mission to Libya with a trip to Burma to persuade the junta to free the world’s most famous political prisoner, Aung San Suu Kyi?
French Deputy Minister of Human Rights Rama Yade told French TV that, following the Libya mission, the Elysee would now concentrate on getting Aung San Suu Kyi freed from house detention.
Aung San Suu Kyi, 62, has spent 11 of the last 17 years intermittently either in prison or confined to her lakeside home in Rangoon, held incommunicado by the regime because of her huge popularity and iconic status in military-ruled Burma.
The prospect of Cecilia Sarkozy helping the campaign to free Aung San Suu Kyi has given a boost to the disheartened activists. As Win Aung, a veteran of the brutally-suppressed pro-democracy 1988 uprising put it: “The ‘men in suits’ don’t impress them. But if they were approached by a woman, and a glamorous, influential woman at that, they might just be moved.”
And, just as in the Libya case, France has something to offer. The French oil giant Total is already the largest corporate investor in Burma, and the military junta can certainly use some French other high-tech hardware.
For ‘peaceful civilian purposes’ of course…
