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Message of Aung San Suu Kyi to
John Humphrey's freedom award ceremony
It is a great pleasure for me to speak on the occasion of the awarding of the John Humphrey prize to Min Ko Naing and Dr Cynthia Maung. It gives me great pride that two people from Burma have been found worthy of this prestigious human rights prize.
Everybody knows of what Dr Cynthia Maung has done on the border for Burmese refugees, for political refugees and economic migrants, as well as for people from Burma who are finding it very difficult to get medical care on our side of the border. It is a sad reflection on the state of things in Burma that many people from our side of the border feel impelled to cross the border to go to Dr Cynthia Maung for treatment. But it is also proof of her great compassion and the importance of what she is doing.
We need more people like Cynthia Maung. I am particularly happy that she belongs to the karen ethnic group, because it helps the world to realize that Burma is a country of many peoples. It is not just made up of the majority Burmese, but of others like the karens, the Mons, the Kachins, the Chins, the Shans, the Arakanese, and many other smaller ethnic groups.
We think that it is not only through genuine unity that we will be able to build up the future of our country. And these people who are going to Dr Cynthia Maung today are not just karens, not just people from other ethnic nationalities, but people from the majority Burmese ethnic group who go to her for help. When it comes to humanitarian issues, there is no question of difference of race, or difference of citizenship, or difference of religion. Humanitarian aid should be given without consideration of these matters. For this reason, I am extremely grateful to Dr Cynthia Maung. What she has done for our people, and what she has done for our country, has shown that we have people like her in our country - people who care and people who will build up the future of our country.
Min Ko Naing, people know less about because he has been incarcerated in a prison in Burma for the last ten years. He is a young man who is one of the student leaders who started the 1988 movement for democracy, and he has stood firm against all pressure from the authorities.
He has been kept in solitary confinement for all these ten years. At the moment, he is no longer in a prison in Rangoon but has been transferred to one in the Arakhan division. This ,means that his family faces enormous difficulties in going to visit him. Political prisoners in Burma are allowed one visit a fortnight. Fifteen minutes a fortnight. But if you are in a prison in the Arakhan division and your family is in Rangoon, you are lucky if you get a visit once in 6 months. His family is devoted to him, but it is extremely difficult for them both practically and financially, to see him even once a month. Sometimes they do not manage to go for several months.
This is a lot of many others in Burma. Min Ko Naing represents many others who are suffering from the injustices of the present military regime. That the prize has been awarded to him gives us all great hope, great pride and great pleasure, because it shows that the world has not forgotten our cause, and that the world is not ignoring our people who have been ignored by the military regime for so long. Even if the military authorities do not recognize our peoples as human beings who need help, who need compassion,and who have the rights to justice, we know now that the world recognizes it. That in the world there are people who stand on the side of justice and on the side of humanity, whatever authoritarian regimes may do.
For this reason, I would like to thank those who have been responsible for awarding the John Humphrey prize to Min Ko Naing and Dr Cynthia Maung - for the great honor they have done to my country and for the compassion they have shown. Thank you very much.
10 December 1999