วันจันทร์ที่ 17 กันยายน พ.ศ. 2555

Aung San Suu Kyi on landmark visit to

Myanmar democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi was due in the United States Monday for a landmark visit during which she will meet with President Barack Obama and be honored for her human rights work.

The 18-day visit will be her first since she began her fight for democracy in her homeland in 1988, which brought her years of house arrest as well as the Nobel Peace Prize before the military regime eased its grip.
In Washington Suu Kyi, 67, will also meet with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and congressional leaders who supported her during her decades of struggle.
She will receive the Congressional Gold Medal, the top honour bestowed by the US Congress which she was awarded in 2008, and meet Burmese diaspora groups as far apart as New York and San Francisco.
She is also expected to speak on Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, two government-funded international broadcasting outlets, and hold talks at the United Nations.
Outside Washington, Suu Kyi will visit the states of California, Kentucky and Indiana. In Fort Wayne, Indiana, she will meet with members of one of the largest Burmese-American communities in the United States.
She is likely to be closely questioned about the reforms that have seen Myanmar take tentative steps onto the global stage after decades under a secretive military regime, and resulted in her election to parliament.
"I think Daw Suu can talk at least about the reforms situation in Myanmar. She will get this opportunity," Nyan Win, a spokesman for Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party told AFP, using a common honorific for the opposition leader.
Suu Kyi will travel with just three other people, he added.
Despite the predicted red carpet welcome, her visit is laced with potential political trouble.
Suu Kyi's stay coincides with that of Myanmar's President Thein Sein, who is due in the United States later in the month to attend the UN General Assembly.
"There is a risk that she will overshadow this significant first US visit by Thein Sein -- who has not yet really gotten the international recognition that he deserves for the remarkable reform process that he has put in place," according to Richard Horsey, an independent Myanmar analyst.
Horsey said it would be "particularly unhelpful" if the US president chose to meet Myanmar's democracy champion but not its leader, "which unfortunately looks to be the case".
Obama last month waived visa restrictions to let Thein Sein travel freely during the General Assembly, instead of being confined to a narrow area around the UN headquarters in New York.
In January Joseph Crowley, one of the lawmakers who sponsored her 2008 award of the Congressional Gold Medal, became the first member of the US House of Representatives to officially travel to Myanmar in over 12 years.
"She has been a determined advocate for reconciliation and we had a good discussion on how we can help to encourage further reform," he said.
"Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is a personal hero of mine and someone I have admired for many, many years," added the New York Democrat. "She is also a hero to people throughout the world, including to the Burmese-Americans living in my district in New York and across the nation."
He said the idea that Suu Kyi will be at the Rotunda of the US Capitol receiving her medal was "just remarkable."
But she could also face tricky questions on the treatment of stateless Rohingya Muslims after a wave of deadly communal violence in western Myanmar.
Suu Kyi has remained cautious in her comments about the group, whom many in Myanmar believe are foreigners and therefore not entitled to citizenship.
Last week the US embassy in Yangon expressed its "great concern" at the humanitarian situation in Rakhine state.
Following sweeping moves to lift or suspend sanctions by other Western nations this year, Washington in July gave the green light to US companies to invest in Myanmar, although a ban on all imports from the country remains.
Suu Kyi is not new to the country. She lived in New York between 1969 and 1971, according to her Nobel prize biography, where she worked at the United Nations secretariat.
Since the reforms in Myanmar, she has made major trips abroad to Asia and Europe.