‘To be speaking to you through the BBC has a very special meaning for me.
‘To be speaking to you through the BBC has a very special meaning for me. It means that once again I am officially a free person,’ says Aung San Suu Kyi at the beginning of the first of her Reith Lectures on Radio 4 (Tuesday mornings). That connection between the BBC and the powerful, emotive word ‘freedom’, made by one of the most influential figures of the 21st century, has finally broken through to the politicians who are deciding on the fate of the World Service. Last week the Foreign Office, coincidentally maybe, but probably reactively, decided not to cut three of the foreign-language services previously threatened with budget-slashing abolition — the Hindi service, the Arabic service and the Somali service. But the threat to the World Service is still not over, and Suu Kyi pointed out how damaging the cuts have already been.
In an interview she declared that what had helped her most through the early years of her house arrest (when she was still allowed the ‘freedom’ to listen to the radio) was not, as you might expect, the news bulletins, the information branch, the serious reportage, but the inane chatter of Dave Lee Travis — or rather the conversation of his ‘listeners’ who wrote in to his request programme, A Jolly Good Show, on the World Service. What she enjoyed was not just the weird variety of music but also hearing about the ‘ordinary lives’ of others. How people manage day-by-day, coping with their own private griefs and tribulations. Or even just how they shop, cook, argue, find solace, chat, joke and above all laugh. As her mother used to tell her, who needs to watch sad films when there is so much sadness in your own life? (Suu Kyi’s father was assassinated by the Burmese authorities when she was just two years old. The Burmese uprising was brutally suppressed by the army in 1988, killing many friends of the family.)
DLT was axed some years ago, along with most of the World Service’s light-entertainment programmes. Yet, as Suu Kyi reminded us, for a campaign to be effective, justified, and to reach out to all people, it needs to be three-dimensional, tackling big questions but also that basic need of people to communicate freely and without fear of reprisal. Keeping fit is one of the first duties of the political prisoner, she told us; not, as you might expect, ideological values or political nous.
In her lecture, she focused not on the philosophical nature of ‘freedom’ but on the practicalities of dissent. She told us about her fellow freedom-fighters in Rangoon, members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) who meet together in what they affectionately call ‘the cowshed’. Many of them still wear their prison-blue shirts, not as a badge of honour but as a constant reminder of how many dissenters are still in jail, suffering who knows what for their beliefs.
She also brought together a surprising collection of writers who had inspired her, both those who had suffered for their beliefs under cruel authoritarian regimes, such as Vaclav Havel, Irina Ratushinskaya and Anna Akhmatova, but also W.E. Henley, the Victorian poet. His most famous poem, the rallying call ‘Invictus’, contains the lines, ‘I am the master of my fate:/ I am the captain of my soul’. This, says Suu Kyi, is what we all need to remember: my mind, she told us, was always free during those 15 years when she was unable to wander beyond the four walls of her home.
Most movingly, though, she ended with lines from Kipling, a doubly effective conclusion because he is so unexpected a mentor for Suu Kyi. ‘He’s the Lord of us all,/ The Dreamer whose dream came true,’ she quoted. As she spoke, it was as if her dream had come true. Here she was speaking on the BBC to an audience of millions through the World Service. What she said was an inspiring call not to arms but to dignity, self-belief and that ability to listen to others.
Her lectures had to be recorded in secret and smuggled out of Burma, as the authorities there would not allow her to travel to London to deliver them. They were broadcast to an invited audience in the radio theatre, where Suu Kyi appeared to us on a huge video screen before answering questions via telephone. Her poise, her calm, her clarity, yet the richness of her talk, every sentence carrying meaning, purpose, intent, meant that even though she was not with us in person she was very much in the room. The force of her spirit is beyond compare.
This season of lectures promises to be one of the most significant since the inaugural series delivered by Bertrand Russell in 1948. After the first two by Suu Kyi, giving us insights into what democracy means for those living under brutal authoritarian regimes, the former head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller will talk in September, on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, about the struggle to maintain a nation’s freedom in this age of terrorism.
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