Tribute to Aung San Suu Kyi A Real Leader

I wrote this when in Thailand. I had visited Northern Thailand and clowned in a refugee camp of 50,000 Karen Burmese. I connected with the people and was deeply aware of the reality in the jungles, many hunted and killed there. There were people risking their lives and teaching the Karen culture in the jungle. The KLA would protect people, many backpacking doctors went alone to help the sick. I met some very brave people there.

I visited the museum depicting the lives of political prisoners in Burma. The prison I looked at in photographic evidence was Insein prison. The torture techniques were shown, it was deeply distressing. I find when I go to these places I am just stunned into silence. The same feeling came over me at Tuol Sleng prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. That was the site where alleged Khmer dissenters were tortured and then taken to the killing fields. I sat outside this former school just silent. I felt the energy there and cried a lot later. Vietnam the same story of mass suffering. For me, it is man’s inhumanity to man which I struggle to understand.

I always remembered Aung San Suu Kyi, I even thought to write to her and wondered if I may see her, but it is so dangerous.

When I returned from my world trip 10 December 2010 I found out that she was released. What a beautiful moment that was, I couldn’t stop smiling.

I wrote this poem for her when I was in Bangkok, Thailand. I always felt Obama got her out, I could be wrong, but that was my feeling. I remember seeing a picture of her with her son whom she hadn’t seen for 10 years. I remember when her husband died the Junta didn’t let her leave to attend his funeral or see her son’s, that was far crueler than house arrest.

AUNG SAN SUU KEY

Daw Aung Sun 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.