March 6, 2006
Sheffield Joins Worldwide Campaign to Set Nobel Peace
Prize Laureate Free
 |
| Daw Aung San Suu Kyi |
Sheffield City Hall
Wednesday 8th March 2006 @7pm
The City of Sheffield will be joining the global protests
that draw attention to the plight of Burma’s pro-democracy leader Daw Aung San
Suu Kyi on International Women’s Day – Wednesday 8th March.
Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy
(LND) was placed under house arrest in 1989 where she has remained for over 10
of 16 years. Suu Kyi has always
advocated dialogue and a Gandhi-like resistance to the military regime in Burma.
At a special meeting of the Council of the City of
Sheffield on Wednesday 5 October 2005 it was unanimously resolved that: “Under
and by virtue of the provisions of Section 249(5) of the Local Government Act
1972, the Honorary Freedom of the City of Sheffield be conferred by the Council
on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Leader of the National League for Democracy in Burma,
in recognition of her personal courage and relentless pursuit of democratic
justice in that country and her commitment to secure democracy and human rights
by non-violent means”.
The Lord Mayor of Sheffield, Cllr Roger Davison said: “By
honouring Aung San Suu Kyi the City of Sheffield will be publicly supporting
her tireless work for democracy and human rights. If only our gift of Freedom
of the City included the gift of freedom from house arrest and
persecution. She is an international
symbol of peace. The Freedom event aims
to raise awareness of the situation in Burma but also to celebrate Burmese
culture”.
The Freedom of the City will be presented in absentia at
the event to be held in the City Hall Ballroom on Wednesday 8th March from 7pm.
The programme includes dancing by Sheffield’s Karen Community, a reading of one
of Suu Kyi’s poems and a performance of the Burma Play by the Northern International
Theatre. The Chief Executive of Sheffield City Council, Sir Bob Kerslake will
join the Lord Mayor to open the event.
Tickets are available free from the Lord Mayor’s Office
on 0114 2734025 and will be available on a first come first served basis.
Peacock blue ribbons will be sold at the event to raise
funds for the Burma Campaign. The
fighting peacock is the symbol of Burma’s democracy movement.
Notes to Editors:
1. Aung San Suu Kyi was born on 19 June 1945. Her father,
Burma’s independence hero, Aung San, was assassinated when she was only two
years old. She was educated in Burma,
India, and the United Kingdom. While
studying at Oxford University, she met Michael Aris, a Tibet scholar who she
married in 1972. They had two sons,
Alexander and Kim. In March 1999, while
Aung San Suu Kyi was in Burma, Michael Aris died of cancer in London. He had petitioned the Burmese authorities to
allow him to visit Suu Kyi one last time, but they had rejected his
request. He had not seen her since a
Christmas visit in 1995. The government
always urged Suu Kyi to join her family abroad, but she knew that she would not
be allowed to return to Burma if she left.
Aung San Suu Kyi had previously returned to Burma in 1988
to nurse her dying mother and became involved in the country’s nationwide
democracy uprising. Joining the newly
formed National League for Democracy (NLD), Suu Kyi gave numerous speeches
calling for freedom and democracy.
The military regime responded to the uprising and the
resulting actions led to the deaths of up to 5,000 people. Thousands more were injured in protests
larger than those in Tiananmen Square, although in Burma there was no
international media present to alert the global community. Unable to maintain its grip on power, the
regime called a general election in 1990.
As Aung San Suu Kyi began to campaign for the NLD, she
and many other leaders were detained by the regime. Despite being held under house arrest, the
NLD went on to win 82% of the seats in parliament. However, the regime never recognized the
results of the election and refused to give up power.
Aung San Suu Kyi has been in and out of arrest ever
since. She was held under house arrest from 1989-1995, and from 2000-2002. She was again arrested in May 2003 after the
Depayin massacre. She is currently under
house arrest in Rangoon. She is allowed
no visitors and her telephone line has been cut.
She has won numerous international awards, including the
Nobel Peace Prize, the Sakharov Prize from the European Parliament and the
United States Presidential Medal of Freedom.
She has called on people around the world to join the struggle for
freedom in Burma, saying, “Please use your liberty to promote ours”.
2. The Freedom of the City is the highest honour that the
city can bestow. It is symbolic of the esteem that the city holds that person.
For private individuals it is purely ceremonial and does not carry with it any
special rights or privileges. The Freedom of Entry given to the armed forces
gives them the right on all ceremonial occasions of marching through the City
with Colours flying, drums beating and bayonets fixed.
There is a Roll of Honorary Freemen with some very
distinguished names e.g. Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela, Helen Sharman,
Harold Wilson, Jim Callaghan, Derek Dooley, Admiral Jellicoe, Ramsey MacDonald
and David Lloyd-George – to name but a few at random. Sheffield City Council
also gave it to HMS Sheffield. On the
last occasion in 2002, we gave it to four Army units. There are a total of 74
entries in the Roll.
3. According to some sources, the Karen people are
descendants of the Mongols, and were among the first groups to settle in the
area that is now called Burma. They
possess a very strong ethnic identity.
Within the Karen there are some twenty sub-groups. About 40% of Karen are Christians. The Karen number between 4 and 8 million,
mostly living near the Thai border, and constitute 7% of the population in
Burma.
4. A small group of 51 refugees arrived in Sheffield last
year (2005) as part of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR)
Gateway Protection Programme. Funded by
the Home Office for the first year, the families are supported by workers from
the Refugee Council to find work and training in the city.
They were already recognised as refugees by UNHCR and the
Home Office before they came to the UK and did not have to seek asylum
here. In order to be eligible to come to
Sheffield, they had to be interviewed by the United Nations, have health
screening and security checks, and agree to contribute to the city’s economy as
soon as they can. They are eligible to
find work straight away.
The scheme is organised by the United Nations High
Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) which, in 2000, placed refugees in a number of
countries including the USA, Canada, Sweden, New Zealand, Norway, Finland,
Denmark and the Netherlands. The UK
government have agreed to accept a small quota of refugees each year under this
programme.
5. Burma is also known as Myanmar.
6. In 1921, 8 March was declared the official global
International Women’s Day (IWD) when Bulgarian women attending the
International Women’s Secretariat of the Communist International motioned the
day to be uniformly celebrated around the world. While IWD now occurs globally
on 8 March, some countries celebrate International Women’s Week, and the US
celebrates International Women’s Month.
7. Further information about Suu Kyi and the Burma
Campaign can be found at
8. Tickets for the event are available on a first come,
first served basis by contacting the Lord Mayor’s Office on 0114 2734025.
For further information or assistance please contact
Christina Staniforth, Media Team on 0114 203 9081. E-mail: Christina.Staniforth@sheffield.gov.uk