Myanmar celebrates 75th birthday of still very popular Suu Kyi
By Mratt Kyaw Thu
Yangon, Myanmar, Jun 19 (efe-epa).- The controversial Nobel Peace Prize winner and de facto president of Myanmar Aung San Suu Kyi celebrated her 75th birthday Friday with unbeatable popularity ahead of the november general elections, despite her loss of prestige abroad.
Huge posters have been placed in various places in Yangon, the country’s former capital and most important city, to celebrate the leader’s birthday.
“Long live mother Suu” or “In support of Daw (the lady) Suu,” say some of the giant posters made with a collection of 7,500 photos of followers congratulating the president with messages asking, among other things, achieve peace and national reconciliation, one of the most repeated promises by the president since she took office in 2016.
Although Suu Kyi usually organizes a crowded celebration party, this time the meeting was smaller and at her residence in Naypiydaw due to the social distance imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Suu lady or mother, as the Burmese know her affectionately, maintains her enormous popularity in her country, despite the fall from grace at the international level, especially for her way of dealing with the crisis of the Rohingya minority.
The Nobel laureate has been widely criticized outside Myanmar due to her inaction and support for the military, her former enemies, regarding the retaliatory campaign launched by the Army against the Muslim ethnic group Rohingya, established for centuries in the western state of Rakhine (Arakan).
Representatives of the United Nations classify as “ethnic cleansing with marks of genocide” the actions of the military that began in August 2017 and led to the flight to neighboring Bangladesh of more than 800,000 Rohingya, who since then have been housed in refugee camps Near the border.
Suu Kyi, who does not pronounce the word Rohingya and refers to them as “Muslims,” ??has defended the Army in public and even before the International Criminal Court in The Hague against charges of murder and violation of Rohingya human rights. during the military operation.
Burma plans to hold general elections in November, the second since the military left office after nearly five decades leading the nation, and Suu Kyi is expected to spearhead the election campaign to revalidate his mandate for five years.
The activist turned into politics seeks to repeat the success of the suffrage of November 2015 when her National League for Democracy (LND) party achieved an overwhelming victory by adding 86% of the seats at stake.
Excluded from the presidency by a clause in the Constitution written by the military, Suu Kyi assumed the ministerial portfolios of Foreign Relations and the Office of the Presidency, in addition to creating for her the position of State Councilor.
Positions that grant politics, daughter of the hero of independence, Aung San, to be the de facto leader of the country.
FROM DOMESTIC ARREST TO PARLIAMENT
Suu Kyi, who jumped into the political arena in the 1988 revolts, spent a total of 15 years confined to her Yangon residence (1989-1995, 2000-2002 and 2003-2010), practically isolated from the outside world, by order of the different Burmese Military Juntas, which considered it a threat to the stability of the regime.
Due to this fierce opposition and her peaceful fight for freedom and democracy, the Burmese woman was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, among other distinctions, some of which have been withdrawn after her controversial reaction to the crisis. Rohingya.
Until a few years ago reviled by the official press of the Burmese military regime, Suu Kyi now covers the covers with her photo and articles about her government work in the newspaper “The Global New Light of Myanmar”, once a propaganda weapon of the military government. EFE-EPA
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