Washed It!

For years in her native Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi has been known simply as “The Lady,” a pro-democracy stalwart and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has languished for years in an arbitrary solitary confinement imposed by the nation’s ruling military junta.

Although she was snatched from the public limelight, residents of the former Burma have always known this about the charismatic Buddhist activist, now 65: She would not be broken by the military generals she has long defied.

On Saturday, Suu Kyi proved them all right. She was finally released from the mildewing, two-story villa where she has spent much of her house arrest, spanning 15 of the last 21 years.

Whether in prison or not, supporters say, she has remained a quiet but defiant symbol of struggle against political repression for residents of the impoverished Southeast Asian nation.

Always cutting a slight figure, the daughter of a national hero who had generations earlier campaigned for Burma’s independence from Britain endured personal hardship to uphold her political principals, often going years without seeing her husband or sons.

But as popes, presidents and activists called unsuccessfully for her release, she never wavered. Once asked if she thought her story had the makings of a Greek tragedy, she responded: “Don’t be silly. I don’t go in for melodrama.”

She later added: “I look upon myself as a politician. That’s not a dirty word, you know. Some people think that there is something wrong with politicians. Of course, there is something wrong with some politicians.”

Time and again, Suu Kyi showed her mettle since taking up the democracy struggle in 1988.

Spending much of her early life abroad, Suu Kyi had returned home that year just as street protests erupted against a quarter-century of military rule. The daughter of martyred independence leader Gen. Aung San, she quickly assumed a leadership role.

Then 44, she campaigned for the government to stage proper elections and became the first secretary general of the fledging National League for Democracy.

Explaining why she risked prison or worse by taking on the nation’s military, she responded: “I could not, as my father’s daughter, remain indifferent to all that was going on.”

Her unsuccessful efforts to stop a brutal military suppression that killed thousands of protestors, repeatedly facing own armed soldiers, gained her worldwide notoriety, including the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, being proclaimed by the Nobel committee as “an outstanding example of the power of the powerless.”

But Suu Kyi’s sons, Alexander and Kim, accepted the award in Oslo on behalf of their mother who, seen as a threat by the country’s new military rulers, was detained in 1989 on national security charges.

She spent the next six years under house arrest at the family home at 54 University Avenue, enduring various periods in detention since then. Over the years, she has waged repeated hunger strikes to call attention to the military’s brutal repression of protesting students.

But Suu Kyi endured. When her husband, British scholar Michael Aris, died in London in March 1999, they had only seen each other a handful of times since her first house arrest a decade earlier.

Press reports have painted her life in captivity as austere. Rising each day at 4 a.m., she meditated, read and listened to one of five radios that were her only link to the outside world. She had no telephone, no television, no Internet. Her mail, if delivered at all, was heavily censored.

Once an accomplished pianist, Myanmar’s muggy equatorial heat long ago warped her instrument. Her only companionship: two long-serving, mother-and-daughter assistants.

Recent months have brought particular frustration. Suu Kyi was just a few weeks away from being released last year when she had an unexpected visit by an American, John Yettaw. She was found guilty of harboring anti-government elements and her sentence was extended.

At the time, one of her assistants told reporters: “It has been a hard life, she has sacrificed a lot. But she is used [to it] now. And she keeps working, waiting for the day she will be released.”

john.glionna@latimes.com
Suu Kyi outlasted her oppressors

WASHINGTON — Rep. John Boehner, the senior Republican leader in the House, signaled Sunday he was willing to compromise on the increasingly divisive issue of taxes, announcing he would reluctantly support extending new tax cuts for the middle class even if that meant cuts for the wealthy would expire.

But Boehner, of Ohio, also made it clear he still thought ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy was “bad policy” because he believed those cuts helped to stimulate the economy and create jobs. And he said he did not necessarily agree that renewed lower tax rates for families making less than $250,000 a year was the best way to go either.

Nevertheless, Boehner, interviewed on CBS’ “Face the Nation” program, said, “If the only option I have is to vote for some of those reductions, I’ll vote for it.”

“If the only option I have is to vote for those at 250 and below,” he added, “of course I’m going to do that. But I’m going to do everything I can to fight to make sure that we extend the current tax rates for all Americans.”

The Obama administration is pushing for a permanent tax-rate cut for middle-class Americans, and last week the president singled out Boehner for criticism during a speech in Parma, Ohio, saying the Republican offered “no new ideas” and was following the “same philosophy that led to this mess in the first place: Cut more taxes for millionaires, and cut more rules for corporations.”

The president also has warned that extending the cuts for the wealthy enacted under President George W. Bush would increase the budget deficit by $700 billion over the next 10 years.

To that end, senior White House advisor David Axelrod encouraged Republicans to join Democrats to support permanent cuts for middle-class Americans while ending those for the wealthy by the end of this year.

“We agree on the middle-class tax cuts,” said Axelrod, speaking on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“Let’s not hold them hostage while we debate whether we’re going to give this very small number of [wealthy] people a tax cut that we can’t afford.”

The issue of tax cuts is all the more volatile now in the runup to the midterm congressional elections in November. Many public-opinion polls show that most Americans favor letting the tax cuts for the wealthy run out by year’s end, noting that much of the economy has continued to stall.

But some Democrats in both the House and Senate, concerned over losing control of Congress this fall, wonder if it would be smarter to lower middle-class tax rates now but keep the cuts for the wealthy in place, at least until the economy improves.

Boehner said he would prefer that plan – lowering rates for the middle class but also maintaining the cuts for the wealthy. “I’ve been making the point now for months that we need to extend all the current rates for all Americans if we want to get our economy going again,” he said. “And we want to get jobs in America.”

In another development Sunday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said that although Democrats will “probably” lose some seats, he remained confident they would continue to run the House after the November elections.

“We’re going to hold the House,” the Maryland Democrat predicted on CNN’s “State of the Union” show. “Our candidates are feeling good.”

Yet Hoyer also acknowledged that the Democratic Party may not be able to support all of its candidates, especially those trailing by large margins. ‘If there are candidates that are very substantially behind and can’t make it,” he said, “clearly we will have to make some tough judgments.”

richard.serrano@latimes.com
Boehner willing to compromise but says ending tax cuts for wealthy is ‘bad policy’

Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggested Sunday that only a small portion of the U.S. force in Afghanistan will begin to return home next year, when an Obama administration deadline for a troop pullout goes into effect.

“Drawdowns early on will be of fairly limited numbers,” Gates said in an interview on ABC News’ “This Week.” “It will depend on the conditions on the ground.”

In calling for a surge of troops in the region, President Obama set July 2011 as the time when the Pentagon would begin to reduce forces, ostensibly with Afghanistan more secure from the threat of the Taliban.