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| Myanmar opposition Leader Aung San Suu Kyi, center, arrives at Yangon International airport to leave for United State on Sunday, Sept . 16 2012, in Yangon. Suu Kyi, whose struggle for democracy and human rights in Myanmar earned her a Nobel Peace Prize, is coming to Yale University to give a talk. The Myanmar opposition leader is scheduled to give a public address on Sept. 27. (AP Photo/Khin Maung Win) |
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Washington.
Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi will be honored in Washington this
week and presented Congress’s highest award, the latest milestone in her
remarkable journey from political prisoner to globe-trotting stateswoman.
The Nobel
Peace laureate’s 17-day US tour, starting Monday, which will include meetings
at the State Department and likely the White House. She then goes to New York,
the American Midwest and California. The trip comes as the Obama administration
considers easing its remaining sanctions on the country also known as Burma.
Since her
release from house arrest in late 2010, Suu Kyi has transitioned from dissident
to parliamentarian as Myanmar has shifted from five decades of repressive
military rule, gaining international acceptance for a former pariah regime.
After being
confined to her homeland since 1989 because she was either under detention or
afraid she wouldn’t be permitted to return, Suu Kyi has in the past four months
spread her wings. She has traveled to Thailand and five nations in Europe,
where she was accorded honors usually reserved for heads of state.
Revered by
Republicans and Democrats alike, Suu Kyi will get star treatment too in the US,
although her schedule is being carefully planned to avoid upstaging the
itinerary of Myanmar President Thein Sein, who arrives in the US the following
week to attend the U.N. General Assembly’s annual gathering of world leaders in
New York.
“The idea
that she will be at the Rotunda of the US Capitol, to receive the highest award
Congress can give, just a couple of years after she was under house arrest in
her own country, is just remarkable,” said Democratic Rep. Joe Crowley, one of
the lawmakers who sponsored her 2008 award of the Congressional Gold Medal.
For years,
some of Washington’s most powerful politicians have been among Suu Kyi’s
strongest advocates, and it’s been a rare area of bipartisan consensus. Both
when sanctions against the Myanmar junta were imposed, and over the past year
when they have been suspended, Democrats and Republicans have found common
cause.
The Obama
administration is now considering easing a ban on imports from Myanmar into the
US, the main plank remaining in the tough economic sanctions that Washington
has chipped away at this year to reward the progress toward democracy.
While
Congress last month renewed the sanctions for another year, President Barack
Obama could waive its provisions. He may, however, look for further concrete
action by Myanmar to earn it — such as the releases of hundreds of political
prisoners who remain in detention despite the freeing of hundreds of other
dissidents this year.
Suu Kyi is
under political pressure from Thein Sein’s government to press the US to remove
the restrictions — and it’s a step that she appears open to, although many of
her longtime supporters in exile oppose it, saying Myanmar should not be
rewarded at a time when ethnic violence is escalating in some parts of the
country.
“We don’t
want to say whether the US should maintain the import ban or not,” Suu Kyi’s
party spokesman Nyan Win said ahead of her visit. “I understand the US is
keeping the import ban because they want to keep a watch on the country’s
political and economic reform and I think the US should continue to observe
(the situation).”
Combining
high-level meetings with award ceremonies and get-togethers with Burmese
expatriates, Suu Kyi will have a frenetic schedule in the US
She spends
four days in Washington, where she will meet with Secretary of State Hillary
Rodham Clinton — who made a landmark visit to Myanmar last December — and House
and Senate leaders. The White House has yet to announce whether she will meet
President Barack Obama. Suu Kyi will also address human rights activists and
meet Burmese journalists at Voice of America and Radio Free Asia.
She then
travels to New York, where she worked from 1969-71 at the United Nations. Her
schedule is carefully arranged not to clash with Thein Sein’s but she is slated
to attend a high-level meeting organized by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon, a
day before the Myanmar leader addresses the General Assembly.
Suu Kyi
will then go to Kentucky — home state of Republican Senate leader Mitch
McConnell — to address the University of Louisville, before traveling to meet
with one of America’s largest Burmese communities in Fort Wayne, Indiana. She
will also visit San Francisco and Los Angeles.
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