Outrage at Suu Kyi ‘flogging’ suggestion

A Burmese government-approved newspaper commentary saying opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi deserved to be "flogged" has sparked outrage among her supporters, inside and outside the country, writes Edward Loxton for The First Post.

The commentary, carried by several official newspapers, including the regime mouthpiece, the New Light of Maynmar, said the military government was exercising "great patience" with Suu Kyi, whose five years of continuous house arrest was extended this month by a further year. It was the kind of patience shown by parents to "naughty children," the commentary said. The government was behaving like the "parent of the people," and Suu Kyi should be "flogged" like a naughty child.

The flippant suggestion horrified Suu Kyi's supporters, and Burmese exile news media have been inundated with phone calls and letters expressing disgust with this latest attempt to intimidate her. "It is utterly shameful that the Burmese regime is using such crass terms as 'flogging' for the opposition leader," Myat Thu Pan wrote to the online service of exile magazine Irrawaddy. "The junta tries to present itself as self–sufficient, modern and progressive, but this kind of garbage reveals its lack of statesmanship and its crude thinking."

Aung Aung Phya Lay wrote to the magazine: "If Daw [Madame] Aung San Suu Kyi deserves to be beaten like an errant child, as the junta states, the big question is: how do they deserve to be punished for their crimes against the people of Burma? I am not only talking just about crimes against minority people like the Karen, Shan and others, but about the crimes against the majority Burmese and, most of all, crimes against the Sangha [the community of monks]."

An opposition journalist in Rangoon said: "This latest attack on Suu Kyi exceeds by far any standards of good taste the regime still claimed for itself. Such statements show the generals in their true, naked brutality."

The offending commentary dropped the official pretence that Suu Kyi is being held under house arrest for her own protection, the reason given when she was originally confined to her home. The propaganda writer accused Suu Kyi and other opposition figures of accepting financial support from foreign governments and rebel guerrillas. She and other political prisoners were being held "in order that they will not be in a position to commit similar crimes," the commentary said.

FIRST POSTED JUNE 13, 2008