Myanmar's democracy heroine Aung San Suu Kyi is vowing to press ahead in her decades-long fight for political liberty while also calling for compromise with other political parties and the ruling junta after taking her own first steps back to freedom.
Suu Kyi, who was freed from house arrest on Saturday amid a divided political landscape and days after widely criticised elections, made clear she faces a precarious position: moving between the expectations of the country's pro-democracy movement and the realities of dealing with a clique of secretive generals who have kept her locked up for much of the past two decades.
“I've always believed in compromise,” the Nobel Peace laureate told reporters on Sunday in the dilapidated offices of her party, the National League for Democracy, with its rough concrete floor and battered wooden furniture. “I am for national reconciliation. I am for dialogue. Whatever authority I have, I will use it to that end... I hope the people will support me.”
This Southeast Asian nation, once known as Burma, has been ruled by the military since 1962, leaving it isolated from much of the international community and battered by poverty. The junta has an abysmal human rights record, holding thousands of political prisoners and waging brutal military campaigns against ethnic minorities.
In recent years, though, it has also become an increasingly important regional trading hub, and its natural gas reserves and hydroelectric possibilities have brought it close to energy-hungry China and India.
Earlier on Sunday, Suu Kyi spoke to a rapturous crowd of as many as 10 000 people who jammed the street in front of the office. While the speech was technically illegal - any gathering of more than a handful of people needs government permission in Myanmar - the authorities made no arrests.
Deeply charismatic, the 65-year-old Suu Kyi is by far the country's most popular politician, a popularity the junta clearly fears. Dozens of secret police officers were on hand on Sunday to record her comments and photograph those in attendance.
“I believe in human rights and I believe in the rule of law. I will always fight for these things,” she told the crowd. “I want to work with all democratic forces and I need the support of the people.”
But she also urged her followers to work for national reconciliation.
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