Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I note the member for Page’s comment: she is tough. Her father, independence hero General Aung San, was assassinated when she was only two years old. In 1990, she won landslide national elections in Burma as the leader of the National League for Democracy, yet she has spent 15 of the last 21 years in some form of detention. During her early years of detention, she was often in solitary confinement. She was not allowed to see her two sons or her husband, who died of cancer in March 1999. She has grandchildren she has never met.

Aung San Suu Kyi has suffered these personal agonies with calm and dignified conviction and strength, famously saying:

The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.

What personal suffering she has experienced, she says, cannot be compared with that of thousands of her followers who have been imprisoned, tortured or killed. Indeed, there remain more than 2,200 political prisoners in Burma, including pro-democracy activists, monks, students and journalists, who are being held in the country’s 43 prisons and in an unknown number of labour camps, many serving sentences of several decades after trials with very limited or no access to legal representation. It is important that we do not allow the welcome news of Aung San Suu Kyi’s release to cloud our sense of the ongoing misery of many Burmese people, including the many ethnic minorities.

A number of commentators have remarked that, in releasing Aung San Suu Kyi, the military regime hopes to achieve international legitimacy and deflect criticism from the recent general election. Noted author on Burma Bertil Lintner has written:

“It is a public relations exercise for foreign opinion after a totally fraudulent election …”

Nevertheless, like his Holiness the Dalai Lama in his steadfast commitment to dialogue with China about Tibet, Aung San Suu Kyi appears committed to engagement with the regime in Burma. I note the member for Page’s comments about this being a momentous opportunity to achieve change and that this is perhaps not the time for cynicism but for positive and smart thinking. Greg Sheridan, writing in the Weekend Australian, has noted that increased engagement by Australia in Burma may consist of further aid for Burma’s people, who, he notes, currently receive ‘among the lowest aid support in the world’ at US$8 per capita. In contrast, neighbouring Laos receives US$80 per capita.

As noted by the member for Page in her motion, the release from house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi is a welcome event, and it is to be hoped that Australia can assist Burma in making the most of this opportunity to bring about lasting reform for the Burmese people. It is somewhat ironic that Aung San Suu Kyi is being asked to speak at this year’s Nobel peace prize ceremony in Oslo, which she could not attend in 1991, and it is to be hoped that she will be permitted to travel. While this year’s Nobel peace prize winner, Chinese human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, remains imprisoned and unable to attend the ceremony, I commend tonight’s motion regarding Liu Xiaobo moved by the member for Melbourne Ports.

These events demonstrate how important it is that the citizens and parliaments of free countries like Australia do our best to support pro-democratic reform in other parts of the world, including China and Burma. I started with a poem from Aung San Suu Kyi and, like the members for Page and Kooyong, I will end with her plea:

Please use your liberty to promote ours.

See this speech in context