Comment by Kristoffer Rønneberg, Aftenposten, Norway.

Urban loneliness. That is the expression used to describe the feeling of isolation in populated areas. For Aung San Suu Kyi, turning 65 years today, it is a precise expression. Yet another year she has to spend her birthday in house arrest, in the middle of Burma’s biggest city. 

I have never met Aung San Suu Kyi. But I have been close. Two weeks ago I was at the Inya Lake in Rangoon. It was a quiet afternoon. Around there were love couples exchanging romantic woes. Groups of friends had gathered to play guitar.

I imagined that the singing could be heard a few 100 metres away where Burma’s elected leader har spent 14 of the last 20 years locked up in her own home.

Earlier the same day I had hoped to meet her, at least see her. But Erik Solheim, Norwegian Minister of Development whom I travelled with, had received the message that it was ”not convenient” to meet Suu Kyi that day.

Not convenient for her or for the generals ruling the country? We did not get an explanation.

Breakaway group
It is now 20 years since Suu Kyis party, National League for Democracy (NLD), won the election with almost 80 per cent of the votes. The election was quickly annulled by the military regime, which continued to rule the country as nothing had happened.

Soon, probably 10 October, there will be election again. But it will be without Aung San Suu Kyi. Her party had to choose between contesting without her as a leader or to boycott the whole process. They chose the latter.

A breakaway group from NLD, called National Democratic Front (NDF), decided that it was more important to participate than to let the whole democracy movement rest on Aung San Suu Kyi.  The party leader Than Nyein told me in Rangoon that he does not see her in a political role after the election – even if his party should get a seat between all the current and former generals guaranteed seats in the new power apparatus.

Critics
Does this imply that Aung San Suu Kyi’s role in Burma is finished? That is what the generals hope. But it is her untiring, brave and peaceful fight for democracy, which is the main reason for her status as a national icon and that so many people outside the country engage in the situation in Burma.

At the same time there are many who are of the opinion that Suu Kyi is no longer as important as in 1991, when she could not go to Oslo to receive the peace prize. Her years of urban isolation is also a reason for why some people say that she no longer knows what the people wants, and that she is not the right one to lead their fight for a free country.

Burma’s Mandela
These are logical arguments. But Suu Kyi’s power and influence go beyond the logical and deep into the emotional. She is the only person who can be a legitimate, collective figure for all of Burma’s ethnic groups.

It’s her name that was whispered among people I met on the streets of Rangoon. She is a symbol, a guiding star for everyone who has a dream of a new era for this poor country.

She is Burma’s Nelson Mandela. Also he sat many years in isolation. Despite being old and weak when he was released from prison he was able to avoid civil war between black and white in South Africa through his ideology of reconciliation.

«Burma’s good tree»
In the book ”Letters from Burma” Suu Kyi cites an old, Burmese saying: "Ten thousand birds can sit in a good tree". Aung San Suu Kyi is Burma’s good tree. No one, neither the generals nor the breakaway group from her own party, can take that away from her.

Happy birthday. Hope you hear the sound of singing.  

Link to comment in Norwegian: http://www.aftenposten.no/meninger/kommentatorer/ronneberg/article3699491.ece