Freedom from Fear

"Freedom From Fear is a collection of writings and essays that provide an insight into the way Aung San Suu Kyi thinks and acts. This is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand today’s Burmese politics. It is very intriguing in some ways. When I met her in 1989 she was still using very down-to-earth symbolism, like the ‘trouser people’. I once went to a meeting north of Rangoon. It was April and very hot, on an open plain. There were thousands of people there, villagers, waiting under the scorching sun. When eventually she arrived, the crowd went silent and she spoke for at least three hours using this very simple style. She said things like: ‘Your head is not for nodding with, you have been nodding for 25 years. The head is there for you to think with, this is the time to start thinking about yourself, your community, about the country.’ She made jokes, she was amazing; I have never seen a politician speak like that to a crowd, no superiority or arrogance; she was there for the people, they understood her and they loved her. But then after her first spell of house arrest, 1989-95, she came out again and she had changed. Gradually she changed even more. She has always been a Buddhist but a nominal Buddhist. She meditated occasionally and sent her sons to become novices in Burma but it was more a social, cultural thing than a religious thing. Suddenly she moved into what seemed like a type of Buddhist mysticism. She started using Pali words and concepts in her speeches and talking about Buddhism in a political sense. I found this alien to the Aung San Suu Kyi I knew from 1988-89. I’m not saying this is a bad thing, but I wonder what made her change. Was it six years of solitude under house arrest, where she meditated and contemplated life and read Buddhist literature? I think an element is there but also like many Burmese politicians have done throughout history, she realised the political potential of Buddhism. She has become a female Bodhisattva in the eyes of the people and she is living up to that image. Many Burmese keep her picture on the family altar, they light incense and pray to her. She is a saviour who will deliver them from the evils of the military regime."

"Possibly more so than any other leader in the world today, she lives strong values in her every decision. We have seen that her values and focus on her mission – the freedom of the Burmese people – are more important to her than her personal freedom, and even being able to see her family. She was tortured, put under house arrest and not allowed to see her dying husband because of her values. There is no more powerful leadership story. As you read this book, you can see similarities with the previous book’s idea of “level five leadership”. In Aung San Suu Kyi there is a gentleness, humility and amazing spirit of reconciliation with some truly horrible people, but also the most iron will. She could easily leave the country at any point, but she has chosen to stay. It certainly puts into perspective some of the leadership challenges that any of us might have if we are working with someone you don’t agree with. This is the extreme. And one of the worrying things about this example is that we don’t really know if she is going to overcome such incredible odds and finally succeed in her goal. She might die before she can do that. Whether she is ultimately successful or not, though, does not minimise the power of her leadership to so many millions of people. There are certainly not many world leaders who would stand up to her example."

"Incredible book, incredibly topical, incredible person. Daughter of Aung San the independence hero, who was assassinated in 1947, she was only two at the time so she never really knew him. But she grows up in a family revered in Burma, and spent some of her childhood in India – her mother was appointed ambassador. The coup in 1962 causes problems for Aung San Suu Kyi and her family, essentially because of the regime leader who led the coup, General Ne Win. He was a close ally of Aung San during the war, but he was an extraordinarily vain man, with a great jealousy of Aung San. He started a process, subtle at first, of trying to diminish the story of Aung San. At the time, none of this is of too much import to Aung San Suu Kyi, as she goes overseas to study and gets married. The dramatic moment in her life comes when Suu Kyi goes back to Burma to help nurse her mother in 1988, and arrives just at a time of great ferment. It’s occasioned actually – just to bring the story back to money – by Ne Win’s decision to try and catch out speculators and black marketers, by declaring whole issues of the currency as no longer legal tender. It’s a classic example of how Ne Win runs the economy – no subtle changes to the bank rate or anything, just cancelling currency. This suddenly, in one stroke, removes the wealth of a great many people. He miscalculates horribly, because it brings the Burmese out on to the street. The military overreact, there are massacres, and Suu Kyi gets pulled into this: the students become aware she’s there and ask her to make speeches. The military then makes another miscalculation: Ne Win decides to step aside and hold an election. For some bizarre reason that remains unexplained, he’s convinced that the regime he put in place enjoys a great popular mandate and will win easily. So one of the strange things about these elections that eventually take place in 1990 is that they were actually free and fair: the regime doesn’t engage in vote-stuffing or any of the other things they’ve just done. The military party is absolutely trounced and takes about five seats, but the National League of Democracy behind Aung San Suu Kyi overwhelmingly wins the election. The regime is shocked beyond measure and engages in more repression: they don’t recognise the results, don’t allow the parliament to sit, eventually Aung San Suu Kyi is put under house arrest, and many other members of the NLD are killed or just disappear into prison, where they remain today. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Her book is a collection of essays that came out in 1995, and it’s valuable at a practical level because it has a number of essays about Burmese history and her father. Beyond that it’s an extraordinarily inspirational book, as befits someone who has stood up for things and made such immense sacrifices. It’s really a statement of her philosophy, her stoicism, her courage, and her belief in fundamental human rights; she’s always advocated non-violence. Also her unwillingness to buy into arguments like the one that somehow Asian people don’t want personal freedom. One of the book’s great quotes is that fear is a habit, and she tried to wean herself off it. What I think is interesting is she’s setting these ideas out in the book, but she’s since remained true to everything in it. Her sons have suffered terribly – to this day she’s never met her grandchildren and only spoke to her younger son the other day for the first time in five years. But her book seems unique, in that this story is still being lived out."

"The copy I have is a much-read, much-battered old hardback from 1991. The word ‘icon’ is much bandied about, but there can be no question that Aung San Suu Kyi is an icon. When I was working at The Independent, I went to Rangoon and met her. A huge privilege. I have a picture of her above my desk at Amnesty, shot by the Independent ’s photographer, Tom Pilston. That trip was one of most memorable things I’ve ever done. There is a beautiful photograph of her, on her release several months ago, which was published as a double-page spread in the Guardian . What leaps out is the excitement in all the faces around her, on a crowded street. That image alone gives the lie to the idea that she is no longer relevant. For more than two decades, every conversation in Burma or about Burma has ended up being about Aung San Suu Kyi. Like Havel, like Mandela, she has proved that non-violence may not work fast, but eventually it can change things. I remember hearing very intelligent people saying of South Africa in the mid-1980s, ‘Oh, this is not going anywhere’. Likewise, you’d hear people say a few years ago of Aung San Suu Kyi, ‘She’s just an irrelevance, she’s locked up in her villa, life has moved on’. That argument is much harder to make now. In Amnesty International’s fiftieth year, it is important to remember how much we can change, if millions stand together, putting pressure where it is needed."

"From the horse’s mouth herself – Aung San Suu Kyi’s Freedom from Fear. It’s very serious, but she is a very serious woman. Part one is about the intellectual cultural and political life in Burma, and she goes through the history of Burma fairly lengthily and prosaically. The book’s quite heavy going, in that the history goes on and on. And she writes about things like ‘the ten duties of a king’ which are: liberality, morality, self-sacrifice, integrity, kindness, austerity, non-anger, non-violence, non-opposition to the will of the people and so on – what’s new about that? It’s a bit like a maharishi having his discourses in an ashram. But she has remained true to that description of a king. Absolutely no question! And her whole way of life is so non-confrontational. She says about non-violence: ‘Emerald cool we may be, as water in cupped hands. But oh that we may be as splinters of glass in cupped hands.’ You wouldn’t expect this book to be a barrel of laughs, but the key thing is it’s written by her. She used to be a main tourist attraction in Burma before she was put under house arrest. She would come out of her house in University Avenue and would give one of her discourses. It was like in London at 11 o’clock you go to the changing of the guard, but in Rangoon at 3 o’clock, you went to University Avenue and you could hear Aung San Suu Kyi. I had tea with her in 1985 and she was wonderful: she was adamant that people should not come to Burma, that it was not helping, and there should be sanctions. It’s exactly the opposite of the argument that you have to go to Burma and talk to the people and see for yourself. I mean, how much can you actually talk to the people under a regime like that? Burma’s been so horribly ruined you’d hardly want to go. They’re doing appalling things to Pagan, for example, where there are 2,000 pagodas and they’re doing them up like Disneyland with all the wrong paints, and they’ve moved the villagers who lived there, and it’s horrible. But Aung San Suu Kyi is wonderful, and my mother, who was Burmese, always said she should leave Burma and travel around the world and rake up support for her cause. But the fact is that she’s there, she’s a kind of role model, and she’s all they’ve got really."