Myanmar democracy icon’s son seeks visa to visit mother

BANGKOK - The second son of Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi Monday sought a visa to enter Myanmar to visit his mother, who is under house arrest but may be released Sunday.

Suu Kyi, the country’s main opposition figure, is serving an 18-month sentence that is due to expire Nov 13.

“They are unpredictable, these people, so who knows what they will do,” Kim Aris, 33, said after be applied for an entry visa at the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok.

Aris, a British citizen, last visited his mother 10 years ago when he was permitted to stay in Myanmar for three weeks.

Suu Kyi, the daughter of independence hero Aung San, had married a British professor, the late Michael Aris, while she was studying at Oxford.

They had two sons, who have seen little of her since she returned to Myanmar in 1987 and got caught up in the struggle for democracy.

Suu Kyi helped found the opposition National League for Democracy (NLD), which won the 1990 general election but was not allowed to form a government by the military.

Myanmar held its first election in two decades Sunday. Despite international calls for her release before the polls, the junta kept Suu Kyi detained, and excluded the NLD from participating through election regulations that would have forced the party to drop Suu Kyi as a member if they wanted to contest.

She was first placed under house arrest in the family’s lakeside Yangon home in 1989, and has spent about 16 of the past 21 years under detention.

In July 2009, a court sentenced Suu Kyi to 18 months for breaking the conditions of her house arrest by allowing a US citizen to stay in her house after he swam across the lake uninvited.

It is not known whether the government will release her Sunday, or what she would do if she gains her freedom.

“It’s up to her what she does,” her son said. “And I’ll respect what she decides to do. I always have.”

Although the Myanmar embassy accepted his visa application, it was uncertain whether it would grant him a visa.

“There is always bit of hope,” Kim said.