Tutu meets Suu Kyi, political prisoners
2013-02-26 14:02
Yangon - Archbishop Desmond Tutu met fellow Nobel Peace
Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi on Tuesday during a visit to Myanmar that also
included talks with dissidents imprisoned by the former junta.
The Nobel laureates met behind closed doors at Suu Kyi's
lakeside mansion in Yangon where the Myanmar activist was locked up for years
during her more than two-decade struggle for democracy, according to an AFP
reporter at the scene.
An official from Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy
(NLD) said the veteran campaigner had returned from duties in the capital
Naypyidaw especially to meet Tutu, who arrived in the country on Monday.
He did not reveal details of their discussion.
Earlier Tutu met political prisoners held under the
previous military regime, which was replaced in 2011 by a quasi-civilian
government that has enacted sweeping changes including the release of hundreds
of jailed activists.
"He asked what we thought of the Myanmar reform
process," former imprisoned dissident Toe Kyaw Hlaing told AFP.
"He also wanted us to pass on his regards and
respect to those political prisoners who he was unable to meet today, and to
those still in jail," he said, adding that his group estimates over 200
political inmates remain behind bars.
Tutu, who won the Nobel prize in 1984 for his role in the
fight against apartheid, was a fervent supporter of Suu Kyi's struggle for
democracy during her long years of house arrest.
In September 2011, almost a year after she was released,
81-year-old Tutu flamboyantly declared "I love you!" to the Myanmar
activist in a video link talk.
At the time Tutu said he would visit Myanmar when Suu Kyi
was "inaugurated as the head of government".
Since then Suu Kyi has entered parliament alongside
dozens of members of her once-ostracised party after historic by-elections in
April 2012, seen as a crucial step in Myanmar's reforms.
Suu Kyi, known as "the Lady" in her home
country, also embarked on several foreign trips last year in a sign of her
confidence in the changes in Myanmar.
The opposition leader travelled to Norway in June to
finally give her acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize she was awarded in
1991.
She was unable to collect it in person for 21 years
because of fears Myanmar's generals would not let her return to her country.
Tutu is set to give a speech at the American Centre in
Yangon on Wednesday, according to a US embassy source.
