A trip down memory lane in Rangoon

In which our correspondent tries to reach Suu Kyi’s house and fails miserably

A look of utter despair took hold of my driver's normally smiling face and his hands shook uncontrollably as he pulled out his driving licence and car documents in reply to the brusque demands of the young Burmese soldier, writes Edward Loxton for The First Post.

Cradling a Russian-made AK-47, the soldier ordered the driver out of the car and told him to walk to a nearby tent-roofed checkpoint. The driver seemed to sag at the knees as he crossed the barricaded Rangoon street. The soldier told me to remain in the car.

After 20 long minutes, the driver returned. "They want to speak to you," he said.

I walked with foreboding to the checkpoint, where an English-speaking lieutenant asked me for my passport and then checked every visa page. "Where are you staying?" he asked, nodding approvingly when I named a hotel used to accommodate official regime guests.

"What is the purpose of your visit to Burma?" I drew his attention to the tourist visa.

"And what is so interesting about this house?" he asked, nodding towards the property just down the road.

"This house" was the home of Burma's remarkable opposition leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

I had been visiting an artist friend in the leafy Rangoon suburb fancifully named Windermere, and I realised Suu Kyi lived a short distance away, on University Avenue. There was, of course, no chance of calling round for tea - Suu Kyi is kept there under strict house arrest, her rambling home guarded by police and government security forces - but I hoped to at least make a symbolic visit.

I had traveled that route before, peering through her picket fence in an attempt to catch a glimpse of this bravely defiant woman. But this time the hawk-eyed security men pounced.

After half an hour, we were on our way again. The driver had been fined the equivalent of £1.50 for taking a foreigner into a 'sensitive' area. I was let off with a warning.

His hands still shaking on the steering wheel, the driver cursed the government and its restrictions. "I had no idea I wasn't allowed to drive foreigners into this area," he said. "You live here by guesswork, by rules that are often made up on the spot. And you don't know whether the slightest infringement will land you in jail."

The driver, in common with others in this cowed country, is being 'invited' to participate in May in a referendum on a new constitution, in preparation for a general election planned for 2010. The only details to emerge yet of the draft constitution's provisions confirm that the military is guaranteed a veto-carrying role in the political structure of Burma.

Suu Kyi won't be voting - unless the regime relents and allows her to leave her house to cast a ballot. She certainly won't be standing as a candidate in the planned election.

Terrified that she would lead her National League for Democracy to repeat its overwhelming victory 1990 election - which was annulled as a result - the regime has manipulated to its advantage an archaic law banning any Burmese citizen married to a foreigner from standing for political office.

They have achieved this on the grounds that Suu Kyi was once married to a British academic, Michael Aris. But he died in 1999, and legal experts say the political ban doesn't apply to widows. But as my driver said, "The generals make the rules up as they go along, just to keep themselves in power."

FIRST POSTED FEBRUARY 22, 2008