Burma's Unsung Heroes

In a June 27 Washington Post op-ed article entitled “The Unsung Heroes”, columnist Fred Hiatt observes that, “all the attention of “world's worthies” is focused on Aung San Suu Kyi, the head of Burma 's democracy party, who on June 19 marked her 60th birthday while being held incommunicado under house arrest.” Hiatt goes on to say that while she is deserving of this attention, “for Aung San Suu Kyi is the Nelson Mandela of Asia,” there is a danger in focusing all of one's attention to a single individual in Burma . Haitt notes that “the movement for democracy does not depend on any one person.”

While extolling the heroism of Kyi, Hiatt observes that “no prime ministers took note when Aung Hlaing Win,” a 30-year-old member of the National League for Democracy, “was seized on May 1 while sitting at a market food stall in Rangoon …no statement [was issued] when police cremated his badly bruised body days later…And neither the U.S. Congress nor any European notables objected when, just two weeks ago, a court in Burma ruled that Aung Hlaing Win… had died of chronic liver illness while in custody, not from beatings he received during interrogation.”

Hiatt makes the distinction between what he calls “the sung heroes” and the “unsung ones”. The columnist goes on, “if Aung San Suu Kyi represents one great mystery of humanity -- its seeming ability to produce great leaders at moments of great need -- young Aung Hlaing Win represents another, perhaps even greater mystery: the willingness of ordinary people to risk everything for freedom, knowing that their sacrifice will be recorded in no one's history textbook.”

The column expresses an admiration for: “The unsung fighters for democracy, whether in Burma or Belarus, Kazakhstan or China -- they do not ask themselves, What good will it do? Their calculations are made in some deeper place, hard to fathom for those of us spared such choices.”