Free Suu Kyi campaign with her portrait distribution
by Ko Wild
Chiang Mai (Mizzima) – A ‘free Aung San Suu Kyi campaign’ has started with the distribution of the democracy icon’s portraits in Yenanchaung, Magwe Division and Myingyan in Mandalay Division, local people and the National League for Democracy party members said.
Youth activists and Yenanchaung NLD Township Organizing Committee members jointly conducted the ‘free Daw Aung San Suu Kyi campaign’ by distributing 500 prints of her portraits in their area starting yesterday. The people from religious backgrounds and all other walks of life took the portraits with great enthusiasm, they said.
“The Township Organizing Committee members distributed the prints at teashops in their area. People from cheroot factories and many local people, especially in the market area came and asked for the prints. We gave them only to the people who enthusiastically asked for it. There were villagers coming to the market by cars and motorboats. Some people came from the west side (of Irrawaddy River). Some monks and novices took the portraits to their villages. The campaign was successful,” Yenanchaugn Township NLD Vice-Chairman Daw Khin Saw Htay told Mizzima.
In developed countries, they are forging ahead successfully on the five pillars of the executive, the judiciary, the legislature, the media and education. But in Burma civil war is still raging and the country is still backward and underdeveloped and wallowing in abject poverty. The regime should join hands with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi on whom ethnic people repose trust to stop this civil war, she added.
While the campaign was on there was no harassment by the local authorities in Yenanchaung but the police closely monitored the situation in Myingyan. They questioned some of the campaigners.
A youth campaigner in Myingyan, who took part in the movement said: “We distributed photographs in the blocks and wards yesterday. Today we distributed about 3,000 copies in Myingyan municipal market and Ayemyathida market. Soon after that, the police heard about it and they came and watched the situation. They asked shopkeepers in the market, who were the people who had come and distributed the prints. The police deployed its forces around the market and at the busy and crowded intersections in the town. The people, however, welcomed the campaign. The most favourite portrait of Daw Suu is the one with her standing by her father Bogyoke’s (General) side,” he said.
Similar movements were launched in Meiktila yesterday. The portraits went out of stock as people from Yawngshwe and Mandalay asked for more and more copies.
The campaigners said that they would ceaselessly continue the movement.
