On Wednesday, some of you, like me, were privileged enough to be able to listen to a lecture by Ben Rogers, a former pupil of this school and now an activist and advocate for the cause of human rights. Ben spoke in a scholarly and measured way about his work, but there was no mistaking the passion he felt for his cause, and most especially when he spoke about Burma, a country about which he has become expert and which he has visited several times, at considerable personal danger.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the geography of South-East Asia, Burma is bordered to the north by China and India, by Thailand to the southeast, Bangladesh to the west and by the Bay of Bengal to the southwest. You may remember that it was much in the news earlier this year, as a result of the devastation caused by Cyclone Nargis in May. Winds of up to 135 miles per hour wreaked havoc in a densely populated, rice-farming region. Reports estimate that more than 130,000 people died as a consequence – it was and continues to be the worst natural disaster in Burmese history. Over a million have been left homeless.
Back in May, offers of international help and humanitarian relief came thick and fast. And yet in the critical days immediately after this disaster, and to the unfolding horror of the watching world, Burma's government refused to allow any foreign aid. United Nations planes which were on standby to deliver medicine, food and other life-saving supplies were refused permission to land. The Burmese government seemed less interested in the fate of its suffering citizens than in maintaining its self-regard by declining outside help.

When, after much pleading by the UN, the planes were finally allowed to land, the state-run media carried images of this very aid being personally handed out to the apparently grateful masses by none other than the leader of the military regime, General Than Shwe. Whilst most of us couldn’t believe what we were seeing, for Ben Rogers, long-time observer of Burma, I am sure that this reaction of the Burmese government would have seemed all too predictable.

This, after all, is the same military dictatorship which has for much of the last twenty years, ignored the democratically expressed wishes of its people, and has locked up under house arrest the Burmese pro-democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi.

Suu Kyi was the leader of the National League for Democracy in Burma. She is a well known advocate of non-violent resistance and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. A year earlier, in 1990, Suu Kyi convincingly won the Burmese general election. In a country like the UK or the USA, winning the election earns one the right to lead one’s country. In Burma, it earned her house arrest. For much of the last twenty years, she has been made a prisoner in her own home, deprived by the military dictatorship not only of the right to lead her country but also of the freedom to meet with her political and personal friends and associates. Despite international outcry, Suu Kyi has remained under house arrest, separated from her husband, family and children, for the vast proportion of the twenty years since then – for longer, indeed, than most of you have been alive.

When her husband, Michael, a British citizen and university lecturer at Oxford, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997, his wish was to be reunited with his wife, so that he could at least die in her arms. Again and again, he applied for a visa to go to Burma to spend his last months with her. Again and again, the Burmese government turned him down. They did offer Suu Kyi permission to leave Burma to visit her husband in the UK – but only on the condition that she would never be allowed to return. Faced with this dilemma, she decided to remain in Burma, and never again saw her husband, who sadly died in March 1999. She remains separated from her children, who live in the UK, as indeed she is from all her Burmese and international supporters.

So why am I telling you all this? Well, firstly, to pay tribute to her courage, and to her steadfast maintenance of her principles when many would have faltered and given in. Hers is an enduring courage – not a one-off act of heroism but rather a deep, lasting commitment to a cause, which no confinement, no personal loss or deprivation can destroy.
Secondly, to give thanks for the example of Ben Rogers, a former pupil of this school, whose work in highlighting the plight of human rights in Burma displays, albeit in a very different context as he himself would be the first to point out, those very same qualities of courage and principle. Thirdly, to encourage you to reflect upon the political and social freedoms which prevail in the UK and which are all too easily taken for granted. And finally, because, when confronted with the ongoing reality of life for Aung San Suu Kyi, many of us may conclude that most of our day-to-day problems are manageable, even trifling, by comparison.

If you would like to know more about the work of Ben Rogers, please visit: www.changeforburma.org or www.csw.org.uk