Aung San Suu Kyi: Her Freedom is Your Freedom

My tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi. I listened to her Nobel Peace Prize speech and what stood out for me was the negative forces that undermine human rights and the importance of expanding the positive forces of kindness. Kindness is the key to peace.

We all take responsibility when we do not forget people who are standing for human rights and democracy. As you communicate your desire for peace and a better world you light a candle that is never hopeless, it is what gives hope to those who are unable to have their voices heard.

AUNG SAN SUU KEY

Daw Aung San Su Kyi,
whispers to me,
‘set me free’,
Yet the world turns it back,
For she does not exist,
In the eyes of a military machine.

For she has been isolated,
Democracy is under house arrest,
For to deny truth,
One must imprison freedom.

Oppression crushes truth and freedom,
The killing fields grow opium crops,
For the opiate of the powerful,
Is submission of dissent,
To bow down before the tyrant and bare your throat,
To languish under shackles as punishment for choice,
As dark satanic mills are another Guantanamo Bay,
Another vortex of powerlessness,
Increasingly removing the human from sanity,
For to be Insein is to imprison the conscience of man,
Beyond the naked eye,
For the witness is executed without pity.

The flames of tyranny,
Burn the eyes to deny vision,
Cut the tongue to mute the voice of peaceful protest,
Ignore the plight of millions as expendable to retaining the false power of ego,
For to acknowledge the truth,
Is impossible in fundamentalist armies,
To accept difference is unthinkable to those who totally oppress,
Yet they look to their victim as the oppressors of their freedom,
Who dares question the right?
For the profile of the dictator knows no love,
And this thought form casts a shadow across the entire world,
That grows as human rights are denied natural justice.

The tyrant is you,
The tyrant is me,
In the moment we demonise the other,
We make the other wrong,
For to seek truth listens to the merit of the argument,
Seeks to share power rather than suppress dissent,
Reaches always for common ground,
Never gives up to serve the other,
For in truth there are no differences,
Only erroneous thoughts that create them and us,
Indoctrinated through the madras’s of any ideology,
Instructing the madness of denial of the shadow,
For the peacemakers will always say to you,
“We are one! I do not hate you”
What does ‘oneness’ mean?
It means we are all the same,
We all cry,
We all smile,
We all need to be loved,
We all dream for a brighter future,
But at what price do we deny another’s future?

The war mongers will deny the dream and call theirs reality,
For to maintain any lie the truth must be silenced and made to not exist,
For very few are prepared to look into the mirror of their own tyranny,
For these are the only embers that fan injustice,
I burn for those who suffer.

I ask you what will you do to bring peace to this troubled world?
I am reaching out with love to all without discrimination,
For hate lives not in my heart,
Yet I am crying for all stateless people,
I am dumbfounded by the blindness of arrogance,
That repeats its own story infinitem but never changes the ending,
So I travel on into the nightmare of Cambodia,
Then Vietnam for more answers await my realization,
For love is peace … always,
And if you cannot love another as yourself,
Then you too are imprisoned by the walls of your own denial … of truth.

May peace come to you as an olive branch,
In your hour of greatest need,
For in that moment you will remember those who are calling to you for help,
And you will recognize yourself in their plight,
For your reflections on justice,
Enable your vision to be that of the peace maker,
In your family,
Amongst your friends,
In your community,
In your nation,
And then you will save the world from the tyranny of self deception.