Aung San Suu Kyi: The Nobel Peace Prize Opened Her Heart to Hope

I remember on the Rotary Peace and Conflict Studies Program in Bangkok, Thailand going on a field trip up the Salween River that passes between Burma (Myanmar) and Thailand and travels up to China. I remember putting my hand in the wild river and making a wish for all rivers to run free. On our trip up to Northern Thailand we visited various groups helping the Karen Burmese who were in the jungles fleeing the military and protected intermittantly by the Karen Liberation Army. I also clowned at the Mae La refugee camp and the many displaced Burmese refugees awaiting UNHCR procesing for a new country. They had no running water and there was disease in the camp. I met one of the refugees here in Australia and she spoke of the kindness of the camp commandant. I recall going to a museum depicting the Insein jail inside Burma and the horrific human rights violations. They had pictures of people in chains hand and legs bound in the most uncomfortable positions, all the torture devices and the plight of the Burmese. Whenever I walk through a prison or place highlighting torture there is some part of you that goes quiet as if stunned by the inhumanity that you try and relate to. I also recall meeting the Backpacking doctors who were risking their lives to give medical assistance to the Burmese and the Karen teachers who were trying to ensure that cultural genocide didn’t occur. I can remember sitting and listening to these teachers and being struck by the incredible courage they demonstrated through their compassionate actions. It makes you sit back and think of the leaderships that exploit countries for financial gain, the inability of the international community to come in and protect the people. You have to question the morality of the people at the top who quietly sanction violence and brutality in the name of their own national interest.

I have watched Aung San Suu Kyi for a long time as intuitively I saw her as a light in the darkness. She is Buddhist and was educated in England and attended Oxford and married to a English Professor and had two children. What amazed me about her was her tenancity to survive her incarceration and the death of her husband who the military junta refused her to see him before he died and later to attend the funeral. There was enough international attention to keep her alive but you can imagine the emotional and psychological strain of being locked up and isolated. She is incredibly brave and strong. She demonstrates that real power doesn’t come from a gun or cruelty but from inner strength and truthfulness.

The video below displays her receiving the Nobel Peace Prize (1991) post award. The meaning of peace in Burma is taken from her speech as follows:

“The Burmese concept of peace can be explained as the happiness arising from the cessation of factors that militate against the harmonious and the wholesome. The word nyein-chan translates literally as the beneficial coolness that comes when a fire is extinguished. Fires of suffering and strife are raging around the world. In my own country, hostilities have not ceased in the far north; to the west, communal violence resulting in arson and murder were taking place just several days before I started out on the journey that has brought me here today. News of atrocities in other reaches of the earth abound. Reports of hunger, disease, displacement, joblessness, poverty, injustice, discrimination, prejudice, bigotry; these are our daily fare. Everywhere there are negative forces eating away at the foundations of peace. Everywhere can be found thoughtless dissipation of material and human resources that are necessary for the conservation of harmony and happiness in our world. …. Wherever suffering is ignored, there will be the seeds of conflict, for suffering degrades and embitters and enrages..”

The transcript of her speech can be found at http://uscampaignforburma.wordpress.com/2012/06/18/daw-suus-nobel-speech/

The video of Aung San Suu Kyi’s speech http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUPfkNXpZvQ

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Mohandas Gandhi

“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”

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