Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The reason I put this motion before the House in those terms is to seize the moment on the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi after many years of house arrest—the last period of which having been about seven years—and seize this opportunity to look at how the country and the people can move forward. As a matter of public record, I hold views and have made comments about Burma, its people and the ruling military regime; over a long period of time I have made many comments about this issue. But, at this point in time, there is a feeling, and a willingness and a wish, particularly on behalf of the people, to say: ‘Let us all try and work together. Let us see how we can make the changes necessary in Burma. We have the international community, and friends like those in Australia, to work with us to give us that support.’

When Suu Kyi was released she came out to her house, and then the next day she spoke at the National League for Democracy headquarters and said a number of things. They were not surprising to me. They were consistent with her conciliatory approach. She, like others, knows that national reconciliation is needed in Burma, particularly to try and restore some sort of political peace and peace in other areas. She said that she wanted to speak directly and honestly with the generals who jailed her so that they could work for the betterment of the country. She has always said that, in fact. That is what she has always said.

There is lots of speculation: ‘Why did they let her out at this time? What are they thinking?’ People are speculating and saying, ‘Maybe it is because the elections are over, they think that that’s gone and she’ll have no influence and no power.’ I think that everyone knows better than that. She has enormous influence and enormous authority in her country. In Burma, she is simply referred to as ‘the Lady.’ That is how people talk about her. When they drive past her place on University Avenue, without her knowing people will often show absolute respect and make a gesture of respect as they drive or go past. People do not have all their hopes and aspirations in one person, but she embodies a peaceful Burma, a prosperous Burma, a Burma that is truly united. That was the Burma that her father, General Aung San, envisaged as well. I have said before that, when she went back to Burma in 1988 and spoke—for the first time very publicly—at Shwedagon Pagoda, she went there as her father’s daughter and left there as a leader in her own right. Everyone was curious and excited to see the daughter of the national hero come to speak.

She means it when she says:

I think we all have to work together. We will have to find a way of helping each other.

She says further:

I don’t believe in one person’s influence and authority to move a country forward. One person alone cannot do something as important as bringing democracy to a country.

If my people are not free, how can you say I am free? We are none of us free.

That brings me to the political prisoners. I note that the military regime said that there were no political prisoners in Burma, but there are political prisoners in Burma. There are over 2,000 of them. One of them who got jailed for about 93 years, Khun Htun Oo, is a leader of the Shan people’s ethnic nationalities party, the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy. He received 93 years, which just seems extraordinary, because he was a political operative too. He is in jail. There are political prisoners and we have to work to ensure that we advocate that there are no political prisoners and that they come out of jail.

One other thing that Suu Kyi said is:

I have been listening to the radio for six years. I think I’d like to listen to some real human voices.

That is a very human and a very telling comment. That was one of the first comments she made when she came out. That brings me to Radio Australia. Radio Australia has a Burmese broadcast program. That was introduced by our government and it is something that I know gets listened to very well in Burma. In fact, it is on first thing in the morning. There are other radio programs that are broadcast into Burma, but it is early in the morning and I know that a lot of people listen to it. It is really important, particularly in countries where there are not a lot of media for them to engage in, and people do love the radio. So that is a good thing.

One of the things that I would say if I could have a conversation with General Than Shwe, which is pretty hard to do, is: ‘Now is the perfect opportunity. Now is the time. You have had the elections, even though they were not free and fair. We know all about that and it is a matter of public record. They are out of the road, Aung San Suu Kyi is free and she has made it very clear that she wants to talk and work for the betterment of the country. The time is right to seize that opportunity.’ That is very difficult, particularly because military dictatorships by their very nature can become quite secretive, paranoid and fearful and can operate in a military model of command and control. That can change. He can actually change that. Am I being naive about it? No, because I have seen it in other countries. I have seen people change. I have seen dictators change. I have seen military regimes transition. We have all seen it in our lifetime in many places. It can happen as well in Burma. There has been conflict there for a long time. There are a large number of ethnic nationality leaders and we need those changes to happen.

I was really pleased with the response of everyone and I want to thank the people who are speaking in support of this tonight, because it is something that we all agree on. It is something where the House comes together and says, ‘This is a statement that we agree with.’ We can operate in that truly bipartisan way. I was really pleased to see that our foreign minister spoke with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, and hopefully there will be a visit to Burma in the near future. Also, the Prime Minister sent a letter directly to her through our ambassador in Burma, stating that people in Australia support her. The motion tonight is clearly about recognising that now is the time to work smart and work well with all the leaders in Burma and work in such a way that they can give voice to their aspirations. As Aung San Suu Kyi says: ‘Please use your liberty to help us achieve ours.’ That is what we continue to do. (Time expired)

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak in favour of the motion moved by the member for Page. Importantly, it focuses our attention at this time on the release from house arrest of a modern-day hero, Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi. Aung San Suu Kyi’s unwavering commitment to a democratic future for her people and her inner strength in the face of decades of repression have won respect the world over. She is today’s most conspicuous flag-bearer for Mahatma Gandhi’s doctrine of seeking political change through peaceful resistance. It was Gandhi who said:

Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.

It has been no different for Aung San Suu Kyi. While the world rejoices in Suu Kyi’s release, it is but an incremental step on a long path to real and lasting change in Burma. How Australia and the international community responds to these recent developments will be critical. Before outlining in more detail what I consider are some of the key factors at play, it is worth recounting the life of this remarkable woman. Her family history and personal journey to this point provide an important context in which to understand her indomitable determination and resolve. Aung San Suu Kyi was born in 1945 to Aung San, commander of the Burma Independence Army, and Khin Kyi, the senior nurse of Rangoon General Hospital. Two years later, her father was assassinated, leaving her mother to become a senior public figure and later Burmese ambassador to India. Suu Kyi was educated in New Delhi and later Oxford University where she met her future husband Michael Aris. In 1965, she moved to New York first to study and then to work at the United Nations. In 1972, she married Michael Aris and travelled with him to the kingdom of Bhutan, where he was a tutor to the royal family and she worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It was not until 1988 that Suu Kyi returned on a more permanent basis back to Burma to provide palliative care to her sick mother in Rangoon. In that year the resignation of the military leader of Burma, General Ne Win, sparked mass protests and Suu Kyi called publicly for multiparty elections. The National League for Democracy, the NLD, was formed that year and Suu Kyi took on the role of secretary-general. As her popularity rapidly grew, the military placed her under house arrest on 20 July 1989.

Despite the restrictions placed on her, the NLD won the 1990 elections with 82 per cent of the parliament’s seats, but all to no avail. The military dictatorship denied any form of democratic government and continued the brutal suppression of Suu Kyi’s human rights. In 1991, Suu Kyi received the Nobel Peace Prize but understandably rejected the military offer of free passage to receive the award and visit her family abroad knowing that she would never be allowed home.

Despite all that she has suffered, including spending 15 of the last 21 years under house arrest, she remains defiant and optimistic. Even when her husband, Michael Aris, was dying of prostate cancer in 1999 and was denied permission by the Burmese government to visit her one final time, she would not be broken. We must accept this is a woman who knows her people, who knows how the international political system operates and has faith in the path that she has chosen. We in the international community therefore owe it to her and her people to do all that we can to bring pressure to bear on Rangoon’s brutal military dictatorship. In her words, ‘Please use your liberty to promote ours.’ It is a plea we cannot ignore.

Australia’s response must be multifaceted and combine a series of diplomatic, economic and assistance based approaches. It must be a balanced approach and not one based solely on isolating the regime. First, we are right to place travel restrictions and financial sanctions against 453 of Burma’s leadership class. There must be a price to pay. Second, we must continue our sanctions on defence exports to Burma and encourage our international partners to adopt a similar approach. Third, a substantial aid program to Burma is important as nearly one-third of the nearly 60 million Burmese live in abject poverty. The civilian population also suffer greatly from a high incidence of HIV-AIDS and poor levels of community health and disease prevention. Problems on the ground have been compounded by natural disasters, including devastating cyclones and floods. Fourth, we must continue to expose the human rights abuses that are carried out on a large scale in Burma. As I wrote back in 2007 in an article in the Age, in Burma thousands of children are kidnapped to become child soldiers, and torture and sex slavery are used as political weapons. Despite knowledge of these tragedies, a number of countries in our region seek to preserve their economic and strategic relationships, most prominently in the energy sector as Burma has the world’s 10th largest gas reserves. These countries protect their economic and strategic relationships ahead of the more important commitment to protecting and upholding universal human rights. In this vein we must continue to call for the immediate release of the over 2,000 political prisoners held in Burma.

Fifth and finally, we must combine these strategies with a policy of engagement with the Burmese hierarchy. Under President Obama the United States have moved their approach to a more active policy of engagement. They found that isolation alone did not get the desired results. This must be welcome, particularly the visit earlier this year to Rangoon by US Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell. We need to work with the United States, Japan, India, Korea and our partners in ASEAN to bring about change at the top in Burma. Indonesia’s President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, SBY, has an important role to play in this regard. As a former general, as a person who knows Burma well and as the leader of ASEAN’s most powerful member, he is strategically placed to take a leadership role. Australia has a very good relationship with Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and Indonesia. We should use our good offices with the president and his country to identify appropriate opportunities to partner with them in this important mission.

The case for change in Burma is more pressing than ever. Aung San Suu Kyi’s release has given the case fresh impetus. Australia, as an important player in the region and committed as we are to protecting human rights, cannot stand idly by. I therefore support the motion and support Australia playing an ever-increasing important role in bringing democratic change to Burma and protecting its people’s human rights.

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

I rise to support the member for Page’s motion.

In the Quiet Land, no one can tell

if there’s someone who’s listening

for secrets they can sell.

The informers are paid in the blood of the land

and no one dares speak what the tyrants won’t stand.

In the quiet land of Burma,

no one laughs and no one thinks out loud.

In the quiet land of Burma,

you can hear it in the silence of the crowd.

In the Quiet Land, no one can say

when the soldiers are coming

to carry them away.

The Chinese want a road; the French want the oil;

the Thais take the timber; and SLORC takes the spoils …

In the Quiet Land …

In the Quiet Land, no one can hear

what is silenced by murder

and covered up with fear.

But, despite what is forced, freedom’s a sound

that liars can’t fake and no shouting can drown.

That poem is called In the Quiet Land, and it was written by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

I thank the member for Page for her important motion regarding the release from house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, who I know is a close personal friend of hers. The Nobel peace prize winner and Burmese democracy leader has been the conscience of the nation in the oppressive society of Burma and a source of inspiration to people all over the world for more than two decades. The Nobel prize committee chairman, Francis Sejersted, called Aung San Suu Kyi ‘an outstanding example of the power of the powerless’.

The woman who challenges one of the world’s most repressive military regimes stands only five foot four inches tall, weighs 45 kilos and has the gentlest of manners.

Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

She’s tough.

Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to 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.

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join with the members for Page, Kooyong and Fremantle in welcoming the release from detention of Aung San Suu Kyi. She has been detained, on and off, for 15 of the last 21 years. Her detention came about because of her leadership of the National League for Democracy, which won over 80 per cent of the vote in the 1990 election. Aung San Suu Kyi is a woman whose efforts to promote democracy in Burma can rightly be described as truly heroic. For as long as the Burmese military junta has attempted to cling to power through a corrupt regime that is in clear defiance of the will of the Burmese people, Aung San Suu Kyi has been prepared to sacrifice personal comfort and safety in the face of a repressive regime to stand up for the democratic rights of the Burmese people.

Aung San Suu Kyi, in her famous ‘freedom from fear’ speech in 1990, said:

It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.

Her words so accurately characterise the plight of millions of people around the world whose lives are at the mercy of a despotic government whose aims are not to enhance the welfare of the people but to consolidate their power by subverting democracy and, ultimately, destroying it. This fear has characterised tyrannous regimes throughout history and has no better characterisation than a number of the communist regimes of the 20th century. Aung San Suu Kyi’s fight for democracy is not only for the people of Burma but for everyone who suffers, or has suffered, due to the lack of democratic rights.

It is fitting that a motion such as this should be moved in the Australian parliament. As a free and democratic country, Australia should show support to those who fight for freedom in a country ruled by fear and oppression. Australia has never had to fight for democracy. We are the beneficiaries of a long-established Western tradition. Yet Burma ceased to be a democracy in 1962 when General Ne Win led a military coup. This remarkable turn of events led Burma on a path to socialism and tyranny. Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988, originally to care for her mother, herself a prominent Burmese political figure. Her father was a famous commander of the Burma Independence Army. She came to lead the pro-democracy movement, which became particularly vocal after the retirement of General Ne Win. On 26 August 1988, she famously addressed half a million people at a mass rally in front of the Shwedagon pagoda in the capital. She was detained under house arrest in 1990, along with many others, by the newly established military junta. She was released in 1995, placed under detention again in 2000 and released in 2002. In 2003, pro-government militia attempted to assassinate her, but her driver managed to get her to safety. She was detained for a third time.

Aung San Suu Kyi was willing to undergo extreme harassment, arbitrary arrest, years of home detention and an attempt on her life in order to secure democracy in Burma. She was forced to forgo a home life to fight for the freedom of her people. She was separated from her husband and her children and has never met her grandchildren. Aung San Suu Kyi’s release from prison on 13 November, after years of incarceration, represents an important step forward for democracy in Burma. For now, Aung San Suu Kyi is free to travel the country and speak to her people, reviving the pro-democracy movement. But we can be in no doubt that the regime will be observing her activities very closely. Throughout Aung San Suu Kyi’s promotion of freedom in her country she has eschewed those who have called for violent resolution. Her path, while a difficult and long one, has always been a peaceful one. This has taken great moral courage. Her commitment to peace was recognised by her award of the Nobel peace prize in 1991.

Despite her recent release, there can be no doubt that the country is still tightly and brutally controlled by a military regime that cares nothing for individual rights. There are still more than 2,200 political prisoners, and these are only the prisoners we are aware of. Before the most recent election the military junta changed the constitution to stop Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy contesting the election. It is no surprise, then, that the military regime was returned in an election that was not free or fair. Aung San Suu Kyi deserves both our admiration and our support, and it is fitting that we pay tribute to her in the Australian parliament.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.