Burmese democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi told an audience at the
University of Louisville on Monday that she is “cautiously optimistic”
about reforms taking place in the southeast Asian nation as it emerges
from decades of rule by a repressive military junta.
The
67-year-old international human-rights figure and Nobel Peace laureate
also said she supported the lifting of remaining U.S. sanctions against
her country despite still-fledgling democratic change and concerns about
human-rights abuses.
“If
we take the view that only sanctions will be able to put an end to
human rights violations, it is in a sense an abrogation of
responsibility” for the nation to police its own problems, said Suu Kyi,
who was recently elected to parliament after 15 years under house
arrest in Myanmar, formerly called Burma.
She
told the audience of refugees, students and supporters that she
believed the changes under way would eventually help “build the kind of
Burma for which we’ve all dreamed.”
Her
appearance in Louisville was part of a landmark 17-day U.S. tour and
was arranged by U.S. Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., one of the ousted
military regime’s strongest critics. Last week in Washington, D.C., Suu
Kyi received a Congressional Gold Medal in the wake of recent democratic
reforms that this year led President Barack Obama to ease an investment
ban and send an ambassador to Myanmar for the first time in 22 years.
McConnell
introduced Suu Kyi Monday by likening her to Gandhi and Martin Luther
King Jr. and said her “quiet resolve” and “luminous heroism” made her
the “most unlikely of revolutionaries.”
Kentucky
is home to more than 2,400 mostly ethnic Karen refugees from Myanmar
who have resettled in the state since 2006, many after spending years in
refugee camps in Thailand. Dozens were in attendance Monday, although
many more had sought tickets to see the soft-spoken leader they
adoringly call “The Lady.”
U
of L political science professor Jason Abbott, who directs the
university’s Center for Asian Democracy, said “the event was
tremendously important to the city and state’s Burmese populations, most
of whom come from the country's ethnic minority populations who have
been subject to a ceaseless campaign of violence ... for over four
decades.”
No comments:
Post a Comment