Foe of Myanmar Junta Wins Nobel Peace Prize : Award: The human rights activist has been under house arrest for more than two years.

By WILLIAM TUOHY

Oct. 15, 1991 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

LONDON — Aung San Suu Kyi--an Oxford-educated opposition leader who has been under house arrest in Myanmar for more than two years--won the Nobel Peace Prize on Monday for her unwavering effort to replace the repressive regime in her native land with a democracy that respects human rights.

Suu Kyi, 46, a slight but determined activist who has been an outspoken critic of the government of her country, formerly known as Burma, was commended for her “nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights” by the Norwegian Nobel Committee in Oslo.

The committee added that it “wishes to honor this woman for her unflagging efforts and to show its support for the many people throughout the world who are striving to attain democracy, human rights and ethnic conciliation by peaceful means.” Her struggle was called “one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Asia in recent decades.”

Francis Sejersted, chairman of the five-member Nobel Committee, said Suu Kyi has become a symbol of a fight for human rights in Myanmar and that “she is a worthy winner.”

Suu Kyi may not know of her $1-million award, and “there will be difficulty” in getting the news through, Sejersted said.

Sejersted said a telegram was sent to the military junta government in Myanmar, which refuses to recognize the overwhelming election victory of Suu Kyi’s political party in May, 1990.

Suu Kyi (pronounced Soo Chee) is married to Prof. Michael Aris, a British Tibetologist who is now a visiting teacher at Harvard University. They have two sons, Alexander, 18, and Kim, 14, both being educated in Britain.

“I am overwhelmed,” Aris said in Cambridge, Mass. “I feel joy and pride but at the same time a great deal of fear and sadness. It is a magnificent gesture not just for my wife but for her people. I hope this prize will help heal the wounds. . . .”

Aris said that he and his sons will attend the Dec. 10 awards ceremony and accept the peace prize for his wife.

Suu Kyi’s political party, the National League for Democracy, declared in a statement that the prize “is not only a tribute to her personally . . . but it clearly expresses the sympathy of the world for the people of Burma. The knowledge that the world is behind us gives us renewed faith to continue our struggle against the dictatorship.”

Nyunt Swe, Myanmar’s ambassador to Thailand, said he does not foresee any impact in his nation from Suu Kyi’s award, the Associated Press reported. “Our present government is going to solve the problem in our country according to our plan,” he told the Nation, a Bangkok newspaper. “There will be no effect from the Nobel Peace Prize.”

He said he does not know if Suu Kyi will be allowed to leave to accept the prize. Asked if she could return if she did, he replied: “If she is not going to agitate the situation, our government will consider it.”

Suu Kyi is the daughter of Aung San, a national hero who fought for and negotiated Burma’s independence from the British after World War II. He was assassinated in 1947 at the age of 32.

The new Nobel laureate had been researching her country’s political history at Oxford, where she received a degree and met her husband who was a teacher. She returned home to nurse her sick mother in 1988, when there were protests in support of democracy.

She became an outspoken critic of the military regime that shot thousands of dissidents and was a founding member of the National League for Democracy, which quickly became the leading opposition party. Her face appeared on T-shirts and posters throughout the country, gaining her the enmity of the nation’s military leader, Gen. Ne Win, who referred to her as “that woman.”

Once, during her political activities in which she supported nonviolence, she walked toward armed soldiers who threatened to shoot her. She was saved by an officer who rushed out of a nearby coffee shop to order the troops not to fire.

When the military regime decided that she had become a threat, she was placed under house arrest in July, 1989. She quickly began a hunger strike to obtain better treatment for her imprisoned political supporters, some of whom had been tortured to death.

Though she was in detention, her party won a huge victory in the national parliamentary election of May, 1990, with about 80% of the vote. But the ruling junta refused to hand over power until a new constitution had been agreed upon. That has still not happened.

Myanmar’s rulers have offered her freedom on condition that she go to Britain and stay out of the nation’s politics. She has refused. Presumably not personally harmed because of her father’s prestige, she remains isolated from the outside world with no visitors or a telephone.

She has been condemned by the government-controlled press for the “tainted race” of her half-Burmese, half-British children. The government hopes that she will voluntarily leave so she can be condemned as someone never really Burmese.

Gen. Saw Maung, current head of the military regime, said Suu Kyi would “never” lead the country because she was married to a foreigner.

Earlier this year, she won the European Parliament’s Sakharov Peace Prize. She was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel, himself a leading candidate.

The White House on Monday praised the award to Suu Kyi and renewed its call for the restoration of civilian rule in her nation.

“We applaud the Nobel Prize Committee’s decision,” presidential spokesman Marlin Fitzwater said in a statement. “Her leadership of the nonviolent movement for democratic reform in Burma is in the best tradition of previous winners of the Nobel Peace Prize. Her courage and her sacrifice are an inspiration to all who believe in democratic principles and government. Her continued detention without trial is the most obvious sign of the repressive manner in which the Burmese military maintains its rule.

“The United States once again urges the Burmese military regime to transfer power to the duly elected civilian government and release all political prisoners--including this year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi.”

U.N. Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar said he hopes that “this international recognition will . . . lead to her earliest release from house arrest and enable her family to visit her without hindrance.”

In Cambridge, Aris said the $1-million prize should be held in trust for his wife. He refused to comment on the internal politics of Myanmar, saying Suu Kyi had requested that he not become involved.

He said he last saw his wife over Christmas, 1989. She was living alone under house arrest in Yangon, formerly Rangoon, trying to maintain a strict regimen of exercise, studying Japanese, playing the piano and reading the few books available to her. Her last letter arrived more than a year ago.

Aris is working on a collection of his wife’s writings, due next month. “Freedom from Fear” will include a portrait of his father-in-law.

He hopes the prize will help her efforts. “The future is very unpredictable. I’m not going to play the prophet. Nevertheless there is tremendous hope. I see it everywhere,” he said.

“Suu said to me before we married that one day she would have to return to Burma and that she certainly would have to serve her people,” he said.

Of his separation from his wife, he said: “It was our moral choice together. It was the hand of fate and history. I promised to support her a long time ago if she chose this path. No matter how long they keep her isolated, I know that her spirits are indomitable. She will not give up.”

Suu Kyi is the eighth woman to win the award and the first woman since Swedish peace activist Alva Myrdal in 1982. Mother Teresa won the prize in 1979.

Suu Kyi is not the first to be awarded the prize while in detention. Albert J. Luthuli of South Africa was under government restriction when he was given the Peace Prize in 1960, and the German Carl von Ossietzky was held in a concentration camp in 1935 when he was accorded the award.

Aung San Suu Kyi

* Born: June 19, 1945

* Education: Studied in Myanmar and India, where her mother was an ambassador in 1960s. Earned degree in philosophy, politics and economics from Oxford University in 1967, then worked at U.N. headquarters in New York.

* Career: Her father, independence hero Aung San, was assassinated when she was 2 years old. She emerged as leading figure in Myanmar’s pro-democracy movement after unrest in 1988 forced Gen. Ne Win, who had ruled with iron fist since 1962, to step down. Military junta put her under house arrest in July, 1989.

* Citation: Nobel Committee said: “She has become an important symbol in the struggle against oppression. She became the leader of a democratic opposition which employs nonviolent means to resist a regime characterized by brutality.”

* Quote: “I try to put heart into the people because a lot of them are frightened that if they do anything, they’ll be imprisoned or harassed,” she told an interviewer in 1989. “I tell people, ‘If you give in to intimidation, you’ll go on being intimidated.’ ”

* Family: Her husband, Briton Michael Aris, is teaching at Harvard University. They have two sons, Alexander, 18, and Kim, 14.

Source: Times Wire Services

Past Winners of Peace Prize

Winners of Nobel Peace Prize since 1971: 1991: Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar

1990: Mikhail S. Gorbachev, Soviet Union

1989: Dalai Lama, Tibet

1988: United Nations peacekeeping forces

1987: Oscar Arias Sanchez, Costa Rica

1986: Elie Wiesel, United States

1985: International Physicians for Prevention of Nuclear War

1984: Desmond Tutu, South Africa

1983: Lech Walesa, Poland