John Faulkner (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—On 1 April this year, a politician was elected to her nation's parliament. Divorced from its context, this is an unremarkable event. This year, thankfully, many thousands of politicians will be elected to national parliaments across the world. What makes this event notable is that the election took place in Burma and the politician was Aung San Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi's victory comes after decades of personal sacrifice. Tonight, I want to celebrate her achievements, remind the Senate of her struggle and acknowledge the transition underway in her country.

Aung San Suu Kyi's heritage is part of her political stature. Her father and namesake, Aung San, is regarded by many as the architect of modern Burma. He came to prominence in the 1940s among the '30 comrades', a group of nationalists who received military training with the Japanese. He was convinced that they offered the best hope of securing Burmese independence, but he was to be disappointed. So in 1945 he helped the Allies defeat the Japanese during the final stages of the Second World War. By working with the old imperialists he rid his country of the new.

In 1947, Aung San negotiated Burma's complete independence, which was eventually granted in the following year under the terms of the Aung San-Attlee agreement. But he would not see his vision of an independent Burma realised. On 19 July 1947, he was assassinated. His daughter was two years old. The consequences of his death were dire. For a time, Burma remained a democracy. However, the unrivalled strength of the nation's army proved too potent an attraction for the country's military leaders.

In 1962, a group of officers, led by General Ne Win, overthrew the elected government. Under Ne Win and what became the Burma Socialist Program Party, or BSPP, Burma became a backward, isolated and insular nation, ruled by a regime that was in equal parts secretive and superstitious. A country endowed with vast natural resources, a rich culture and an industrious population became one of the poorest countries in the world.

Protected by her father's stature, Suu Kyi was relatively untouched by her nation's birth pains. In 1960, her mother was named Burma's ambassador to India. Suu Kyi attended school and university there, graduating with a major in political science from the University of Delhi. She then studied at Oxford and later worked for the United Nations in New York. After marrying, she moved back to England with her husband, Michael Aris, and raised the couple's two sons while writing on Burmese history, culture and politics. In 1985, she was awarded a visiting fellowship to Kyoto University and later completed a PhD at the University of London.

But during her long absence she remained forever conscious of events at home. In 1988, Suu Kyi returned to Burma to nurse her ill mother and was swept up in the movement for democratic reform. Earlier that year, General Ne Win had announced his intention to step down as leader of the BSPP. On 8 August 1988, a day considered auspicious by the Burmese, pro-democracy groups coordinated country wide strikes and demonstrations. They were met with violent suppression. Ne Win is reported to have told soldiers that their guns were not to shoot upwards. Thousands were killed. Perhaps it was an auspicious date, because a hitherto reluctant Suu Kyi became so incensed by the violence that later that month she appeared before a crowd of half-a-million people at Rangoon's Shwedagon Pagoda. At the foot of that ancient monument, a place where her father had demanded Burmese independence some 40 years earlier, she too demanded that a multiparty system of government be established and that free and fair elections be arranged as quickly as possible. The symbolism was not lost on the crowd.

Events moved swiftly over the next two years. In September 1988 the regime formed the Orwellian State Law and Order Restoration Council. In response, Aung San Suu Kyi co-founded the National League for Democracy, the NLD. For the next three months she toured the country promoting democratic reform and human rights. She did so despite a military ban on her movements. In one instance she literally stared down a group of soldiers ordered to fire on her party.

Realising that Suu Kyi would not be intimidated, the regime sought to remove her from public view. On 20 July 1989 she was placed under house arrest without either charge or trial. Other NLD members were jailed, many tortured and some killed. Suu Kyi would spend the best part of the next 22 years under house arrest. In May 1990, during the first year of her detention, the NLD won the national election in a landslide. The pro-democracy party won 392 of the 485 seats in Burma's national assembly. The regime simply refused to recognise the result.

Suu Kyi's long years as a prisoner of conscience came at great personal cost. She was periodically cut off from her party, cut off from her family and cut off from the international community. The cruelty of this uncertain existence was encapsulated in the regime's refusal, despite international condemnation, to grant her husband a visa during the final stages of his ultimately fatal battle with cancer. Suu Kyi's years of isolation gave her time to reflect on her activism, on the limits of authoritarian rule and on the strengths of democratic practice. Suu Kyi's ability to place her country's interests before her own is based on a deep philosophical commitment to what constitutes the good life. For Suu Kyi, in her words:

To live the full life one must [not only] have the courage to bear the responsibility of the needs of others … [but] one must [also] want to bear this responsibility.

In her essay In Quest of Democracy she reminds us that:

… democracy, like liberty, justice and other social and political rights, is not 'given', it is earned through courage, resolution and sacrifice.

Progress always comes at a cost.

Suu Kyi's courage, resolve and sacrifice has been based on the belief that despite the regime's intimidation there remains in Burma a desire for a democratic system that will lift the people, in her words:

… from the position of 'rice-eating robots' to the status of human beings who can think and speak freely and hold their heads high in the security of their rights.

Forever optimistic, always Suu Kyi has remained confident that despite great odds the will of the people will prevail.

A fearless advocate for democracy, Suu Kyi appreciates the relationship between power, fear and politics. In her now famous essay Freedom from Fear she argues:

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.

She points out that beneath the facade of power there often lies great uncertainty, fragility and insecurity. At its core politics draws on the basest of human emotions—emotions such as hope and fear. Through her years of struggle Suu Kyi has responded to fear and despair, with courage and hope.

Her dignified resistance has led the people of Burma to simply call her 'the lady', and it has won her international admiration. She is the recipient of the US Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and the Nobel Peace Prize, amongst many other accolades.

The signs in Burma are promising. The NLD won 43 of the 45 seats contested in this year's by-election. Suu Kyi's election to Burma's national assembly will present new challenges, as idealism and hope meet the sometimes harsh realities of compromise and realpolitik. My colleague Senator Bob Carr's recent visit to Burma demonstrates Australia's determination to see that the reform process is sustained in Burma. I am confident that the lifting of some sanctions and the doubling of Australia's aid budget to $100 million per year by 2015 will ensure that our enthusiasm is matched by practical steps designed to encourage further reform.

We are quick to condemn those who crush dissent, stifle reform and denigrate democratic practices—and rightly so—but we also should offer our cautious encouragement when reforms are introduced, when dissent is respected and when democratic practices are restored. Nevertheless, we should temper our enthusiasm with the knowledge that there have been many false starts along Burma's road to democracy and that its newly ratified constitution preserves much of the military's power.

Aung San Suu Kyi once asked those interested in intellectual freedom and humanitarian ideals to 'please use your liberty to promote ours'. I hope that by raising Suu Kyi's cause we can promote democracy and human rights in Burma and, more importantly, that Aung San Suu Kyi's election enables her to promote the liberty of her own people within her own nation.