Peace activist to test the bounds of freedom

Vancouver author Alan Clements hosts Burma benefit in support of his friend Aung San Suu Kyi

When Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi leaves the safety of her home, risking her life to tour her country later this month, a friend in Vancouver will be praying.

Alan Clements, a Vancouver author, spent nearly a decade living in Myanmar, also known as Burma, as a Buddhist monk.

He met Suu Kyi in 1996 and was inspired to write a book, The Voice of Hope, which broadcasts her message of freedom.


"As long as my people are not free," Clements quotes Suu Kyi as saying, "none of us are free. Freedom is indivisible. Either we are all free together or we are unfree together."

Clements is hosting an event on Saturday to celebrate Aung San Suu Kyi's 66th birthday and to showcase the importance of freedom and basic human rights.

Suu Kyi has been under house arrest for the better part of the past 20 years because the country's rulers are threatened by her message of freedom, Clement said. Her father, who was also a pro-democracy figure, was killed by political rivals when she was just two years old.

Although Suu Kyi was released from house arrest last November, she has not travelled freely in her homeland; when she has tried to, there has either been an attempted assassination, or she has been arrested again. In 2003, more than 100 of her followers were bludgeoned to death while travelling with her in a motorcade.

Despite the danger, Clement said Suu Kyi feels she must travel to test her freedom in a brutal, totalitarian regime that has an appalling human rights record and is well known for political suppression.

"Aung San Suu Kyi says in the book that liberty is equally important to the fresh air that we breathe. If you don't keep it and maintain it, we're going to die," Clements said. "She has become the living symbol of this value that is the lifeblood of civilized existence: freedom. Use your freedom to support the freedom of others -that's her message."

Clement is worried Suu Kyi will be assassinated or imprisoned again when she ventures out of the safety of her home for a tour around her country, which begins June 22.

"Personally, I, like many others, fear this is the regime's Gandhi or Bhutto moment," Clement said. "Clearly, she thinks that time is now, six months after her release from nearly eight years of detention, to test her freedom by taking her message of nonviolent revolution to the people of her country and to capitalize on the momentum of the 'Arab Spring.' "

Clements was motivated to write about the country after thousands of peaceful protesters for democracy were killed there in 1988. He says he witnessed human rights atrocities and ethnic cleansing while he was there. After he left the country, he wrote Burma: The Next Killing Fields in 1990.

He has written four books on the country since then, including his latest, A Future to Believe In, which includes 108 reflections on different dimensions of freedom and will be launched on Saturday. The event, a benefit for the Burma Project International, is at the Firehall Arts Centre, 280 East Cordova St., Saturday at 8 p.m. Tickets are $22 in advance and $25 at the door, and can be ordered by email at contact@ worlddharma.com, or by calling 604-689-0691. Admission includes a copy of the audio book of The Voice of Hope.

tsherlock@vancouversun.com

Source:http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Peace+activist+test+bounds+freedom/4955775/story.html

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