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Burmese Nobel Prize Winner to Give Commencement Address at Bucknell
LEWISBURG, Pa. -- Aung San Suu Kyi, the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize winner for her struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma, has agreed to give the address at Bucknell's 149th commencement May 16, President William D. Adams has announced.
"We are deeply honored that the courageous Aung San Suu Kyi accepted our invitation," Adams said. "Her fearless and unflagging efforts to win freedom for the Burmese people is an inspiration to all who value liberty and human rights. And, having Aung San Suu Kyi as our commencement speaker further strengthens the 140-year bond between Burma and Bucknell."
Adams acknowledged the likelihood that Suu Kyi would be forced to have someone represent her at Bucknell's commencement, just as her late husband and their two sons accepted the Nobel Prize on her behalf. Resolution of that issue is not expected until close to the day of commencement.
In addition to providing the commencement address, Suu Kyi will be presented with the Bucknell Award of Merit, the university's highest honor.
Suu Kyi, 53, is the opposition leader to the military junta that now rules Burma, which the dictatorship has renamed Myanmar. She founded the National League for Democracy party that won national elections in 1990. However, the military regime rescinded the elections, placed her under house arrest for six years and imprisoned, tortured and killed many of the victorious members of her party.
Today she remains under strict government control in the Burmese capital of Rangoon, declining to leave the country for fear the government will not let her return. Her fear about not returning prevented her from seeing her dying husband, Michael Aris, in England earlier this year. Aris, who Burmese authorities denied permission to pay a last visit to Suu Kyi in March, died of cancer March 27. The couple had not seen one another for three years.
According to Charles Pollock, assistant to Adams and chair of the commencement speaker committee, even a speech read by someone else would be deeply meaningful to Bucknell, given the university's long-standing relationship to Burma. "Her absence itself would dramatically underscore her circumstance, and that is part of what we are honoring," Pollock said. "This will be a very moving time, regardless of who is at the podium."
Bucknell's first international student was Dr. Maung Shaw Loo of Burma who enrolled at the university 140 years ago. One of Bucknell's founders, Eugenio Kincaid, was a Baptist missionary in Burma in 1830. Howard Malcom, the first Bucknell president, visited the Baptist missions there. An 1858 graduate of Bucknell's then-Female Institute established the first girls' school in Burma. Burma weekends were held at Bucknell from 1948 to 1965 and attracted Burmese students from throughout the United States, as well as Burmese diplomats and U.S. government leaders. Bucknell held a Burma Focus Semester last fall. Two great-grandsons of Shaw Loo attended some of the events, including an alumni reunion.
Suu Kyi is the daughter of U Aung San, who founded Burma's modern army, working to throw out the colonial British government and then the Japanese during World War II. He was assassinated by a political rival in 1947 after negotiating independence from Britain. Suu Kyi was only 2 years old at the time.
Suu Kyi has lived most of her life abroad. Her mother, Kin Kyi, was ambassador to India when she was a teenager. She studied at Oxford University, worked at the United Nations in New York and then married Aris, an Oxford classmate. They started a family when they were in Bhutan, finally ending up in England after scholarly assignments in Japan and India. At his death, Aris was a senior research fellow in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at St. Antony's College at Oxford.
She had warned Aris before they were married that someday she might have to return to her homeland. "I only ask one thing, that should my people need me, you would help me to do my duty by them," she wrote to him.
Suu Kyi said after Aris died, "I feel so fortunate to have had such a wonderful husband, who has always given me the understanding I needed. Nothing can take that away from me."
In March 1988, Suu Kyi left Aris and their two teen-aged sons, Alexander and Kim, to go to Burma to care for her dying mother. She arrived at a time of turmoil. Burmese had taken to the streets to demonstrate against the totalitarian regime. The regime responded by massacring demonstrators and imposing martial law.
Compelled by the bond she felt with her murdered father, she said she had "a deep sense of responsibility for the welfare of my country." She organized the National League for Democracy and attracted national attention when she spoke to a rally attended by 500,000 at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon. "I could not, as my father's daughter, remain indifferent to all that was going on. This national crisis could be called the second struggle for independence," she said.
In July 1989, the junta placed her under house arrest, but her party won a landslide victory in the May 1990 elections. In 1991, she was awarded the Nobel Prize.
Francis Sejersted, chairman of the Nobel committee, said in presenting the prize, "In the good fight for peace and reconciliation, we are dependent on persons who set examples, persons who can symbolize what we are seeking and mobilize the best in us. Aung San Suu Kyi is just such a person. She unites deep commitment and tenacity with a vision in which the end and the means form a single unit. Its most important elements are: democracy, respect for human rights, reconciliation between groups, non-violence and personal and collective discipline."
The struggle goes on. At least 270 people were sentenced to long prison terms in January for demanding that the parliament elected in 1990 be seated. Since, the government has shut down more than 40 NLD offices, arresting 1,000 party supporters.
Even though her house arrest has ended, Suu Kyi's activities are severely curtailed. Last summer, she was repeatedly stopped by soldiers as she sought to travel to party offices. It took the protests of seven nations, including the United States, to end a week-long standoff as she was held captive in her car, 30 miles from Rangoon.
The government has stepped up attacks against her recently, calling Suu Kyi an "ogre," a "maggot," an "axe handle of the neo-colonialists," and a "treasonous element" who deserves to be deported.
Freedom from fear is one of Suu Kyi's constant themes. One of her quotes, "Fear is a habit. I am not afraid," shows up on T-shirts worn surreptitiously by supporters. In a book she wrote with Alan Clements and published last year, "The Voice of Hope," Suu Kyi elaborated, "Ö fear is rooted in insecurity and insecurity is rooted in lack of metta (loving-kindness). If there's a lack of metta, it may be a lack in yourself, or in those around you, so you feel insecure."
A Buddhist who worked out a political philosophy from her father and India's Mohandas K. Gandhi, Suu Kyi is committed to nonviolence. "I do not believe in an armed struggle because it will perpetrate the tradition that he who is best at wielding arms, wields power," she explained in the book. However, "non-violence means positive action. You have to work for whatever you want. You don't just sit there doing nothing and hope to get what you want. It just means that the methods you use are not violent ones. Some people think that non-violence is passiveness. It's not so."
Suu Kyi also wrote, "Aung Sun of Burma," the biography of her father.
Some 800 students are expected to graduate in ceremonies beginning at 10 a.m. in Bucknell's Academic Quadrangle.
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