Francis Pike

The truth about Burma’s ‘imprisoned princess’

It’s as ignorant to demonise Aung San Suu Kyi as it was to idolise her

As Perseus was flying along the coast on his winged horse Pegasus, he spotted Andromeda tied to a rock as a sacrifice to Poseidon’s sea monster Cetus. It was love at first sight. Perseus slew Cetus and married Andromeda. Thus began the damsel-in-distress archetype that has been a mainstay of western culture ever since. Riffs on the archetype have been used by Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens and Wagner. Perhaps it was these examples that inspired the global liberal establishment (the BBC, Hollywood and the Nobel Peace Prize committee among others) to create, in the 1990s, the mythical version of Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma’s ‘imprisoned princess’, the saintly spiritual heir to Mahatma Gandhi, as Time magazine described her.

Aung San Suu Kyi, or The Lady as she has become known, was a perfect clothes horse for the western media’s utopian fantasies. Hollywood was also hooked. Those most self-regarding of moral arbiters, Angelina Jolie and Emma Thompson, beat a path to her door. So too did former Bond girl, the glamorous Michelle Yeoh, who went on to take the lead role in The Lady, Luc Besson’s 2011 syrupy hagiographical biopic.

Now, however, these liberal western fantasies have evaporated. Last month, the European parliament decided to suspend The Lady from the ‘Sakharov prize community’ 20 years after she was handed the peace award — becoming the latest previously sycophantic institution to make such a humiliating U-turn.

The Lady’s myth began when she returned to Burma in 1988, leaving her husband and children behind in Oxford. She helped to found the National League for Democracy and drew huge crowds in rallies that presaged overwhelming electoral victory in 1990. When the military junta incarcerated The Lady she became an instant hero, winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. Her other awards include the International Simon Bolivar Prize, the Olof Palme Prize, the Freedom of Oxford, Ambassador of Conscience award for Amnesty International and the US Congressional Gold Medal.

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