A woman of gentle steel

In our age of freedom there are still too many regions where tyranny prevails. Myanmar - still more familiar as Burma - is one of them. It achieved independence from Britain on January 4, 1948. At the time this southeast Asian country was one of the richest and most educated in the world. Today it is one of the poorest.

The struggle for freedom was led by acknowledged hero General Aung San. He did not see his objective reached - he was assassinated a few months before that happened. Nor did he ever, could he ever imagine what would become of his country, much less of his then two-year old daughter.

Aung San Suu Kyi is now 65. For a long time she lived abroad, among other things reading Politics, Philosophy and Economics, at Oxford. She married Oxford academic Michael Aris and had two children by him.

Meanwhile, her country had fallen under the curse of military oppression, which has savaged Burma for years. The regime holds mock elections and has over 2,000 political prisoners. Suu Kyi is the most well-known of them.

In 1988 she went back to her country and became involved in a pro-democracy movement.

She is the acknowledged leader of the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD).

She is also the military regime's blackest sheep and its biggest mistake. Soon after her return home, General Aung San's daughter was arrested. Her first of many periods of detention and loss of personal freedom commenced. She has spent around half of her post-1988 time in Burma under some form of detention.

The oppressive military regime's mistake was that it could not have chosen a more determined woman to try to suppress. She is made of intellectual and emotional steel, even if physically she is now ailing, suffering from low blood pressure and dehydration.

How strong she is was shown early on when the regime would not allow her to see her two sons and her husband. Aris had cancer.

As he lay on his deathbed in March 1999 the military authorities "offered" to allow Suu Kyi to go to the UK to see him. History records that she felt compelled to refuse for fear that the military oppressors would not allow her back in Burma. I remember the Oxford Society mobilising Oxonians to support her.

Her anguish could not have been greater. Yet, she persevered, as Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela had done before her. The more the obnoxious military regime ill-treated her, the more she became a national and international symbol of peaceful resistance, of hope, of something wonderful beyond belief.

Recently the regime found another excuse to put her on trial again. An American swam across a lake to her compound to speak to her. He was arrested. Later, so was she. She was tried and, surprise surprise, found guilty. She was sentenced to another 18 months of house arrest.

Disgusting, yes, but also suggestive of hope. At long last Suu Kyi, awarded a Nobel Prize in 1991 for her efforts to bring democracy to Burma, may have brought about a glimmer of light in the ugly darkness. Her sentence was, by comparison to past experience, mild.

It will keep her out of the public eye before the elections due next year. Yet it will be a softer period than in past years, which included solitary confinements during her first six years under house arrest.

Perhaps the regime is at long last feeling the pressure of world opinion even if, for economic reasons related to Burma's exports, that is not as united as it should be. Perhaps Suu Kyi, the woman of gentle steel, has become too big a symbol to handle with unlimited disdain and roughness.

Each time the military regime has been brutal, albeit in a non physical sense, towards Suu Kyi, her popularity and meaning have grown.

That was again demonstrated in 2007. A battered people protested against fuel prices. Traditionally peaceful Buddhist monks joined in. Suu Kyi appeared outside her home to meet some of them, her first public appearance since 2003.

The regime stamped out the protests, finding time to punish the hero's heroine daughter once again. World attention focused more closely on Burma.

For all that, there will be no invasion to bring about regime change. The Burmese people will have to do that themselves, someday. They will need other heroes, cast in the mould of General Aung San, whom the regime do not even acknowledge on Independence Day. It will happen eventually.

The lasting strength of Suu Kyi will lead to that. Global public support for her and what she stands for will help, even from tiny Malta.

Gandhi changed India. Mandela changed South Africa. External support helped them. So will it benefit Suu Kyi and her noble mission.