3 May 1998 Reuters News English (c) 1998 Reuters Limited NEW DELHI, May 3 (Reuters) – India’s defence minister said on Sunday China had built a sophisticated electronic surveillance base in Myanmar’s Coco Islands and was beefing up airfields in Tibet to take supersonic fighters. “China has installed sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment in the Coco…
When Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, two years after the Dalai Lama and two years before Nelson Mandela, she was hailed as “Burma’s Modern Symbol of Freedom” for her non-violent campaign against the ruling military junta. At that time Suu Kyi was under house arrest in Yangon and her son Alexander, accepting the prize on his mother’s behalf in Oslo, said though she was described as a political dissident, “her quest is basically spiritual”.
That was then. For months now, Suu Kyi has been criticised for not bringing peace to Rakhine state, home to the Muslim Rohingya minority. In April, when the BBC asked her if she was an amalgam of Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa, she said: “I’m just a politician…I’m no Mother Teresa… Mahatma Gandhi actually was a very astute politician.” When asked if she wasn’t tempted to follow Gandhi’s example of putting his own life at risk for India’s minority Muslims, Suu Kyi said: “I don’t think that putting one’s life at risk is a particular example that I’d like to follow.”