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发帖数: 29846 | 1 Myanmar's Suu Kyi to Visit Norway, Britain
Wednesday, April 18, 2012 5:19 AM
YANGON, Myanmar — Nobel Peace Prize laureate and newly elected lawmaker
Aung San Suu Kyi will travel outside Myanmar for the first time in 24 years
after accepting invitations to visit Norway and Britain in June, her party
said on Wednesday.
Her travel caps months of dramatic change in Myanmar, including a historic
election on April 1 that won her a seat in a year-old parliament that
replaced nearly five decades of oppressive military rule.
Her trip will include a visit to British city Oxford, where she attended
university in the 1970s, said National League for Democracy (NLD) party
spokesman Nyan Win.
"But I don't know the exact date yet," the spokesman said, adding he did not
know which country she would visit first. She has previously indicated that
it would be Norway.
Suu Kyi, 66, was first detained in 1989, and spent 15 of the next 21 years
in detention until her release from house arrest in November 2010, refused
to leave the country during the brief periods when she was not held by
authorities, for fear of not being allowed to return.
She won one of her party's 43 seats in this month's by-election following a
series of reforms under President Thein Sein, a former general, including
the release of political prisoners, more media freedom, dialogue with ethnic
militias and an exchange rate unification seen crucial to fixing the
economy.
'GREAT PROGRESS'
Suu Kyi was invited to visit Britain when she met Prime Minister David
Cameron in Yangon on Friday. At the time, she said the fact that she would
consider the offer, rather than reject it outright, showed "great progress"
had been achieved in Myanmar.
"Two years ago I would have said thank you for the invitation, but sorry,"
she added.
Suu Kyi's long refusal to leave Myanmar characterized her steely
determination to defy the ruling junta, which offered to release her from
house arrest to be with her late husband, Michael Aris, who died of cancer
in Britain in 1999.
Their story was played out on the big screen late last year in the film "The
Lady", as she is affectionately known, with Malaysian action star Michelle
Yeoh playing Suu Kyi.
The daughter of assassinated independence hero Aung San visited Myanmar in
April 1988 to take care of her dying mother, Khin Kyi, a former ambassador
to India and Nepal.
Her NLD went on to win by a landslide a 1990 election for a constitution-
drafting assembly, but the military ignored the result, leading to a two-
decade political stalemate between the junta and Suu Kyi's opposition. |
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