Walking, rocking on from ignorance


Opinion
September 27, 2009 2:00 AMLast weekend my wife and I and our friends Denise and Terri headed down to Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Mass. We tailgated, we drank beer and we chowed down on some sensational bourbon-soaked steak tips. We goofed off and we joked.

Then we entered the stadium and rocked out with U2.

I've always admired the band's ethos and character, and I like a lot of their songs. Wouldn't say I'm a U2 fanatic, though, which was true of half our crew. While I respect the nobility of their commitment to improve the world, I also sympathize with those who find them preachy.

But when these guys took the stage, they put on a show that blew me away. Not only through their tunes and theatricality, but in the way they blended their message with their music. They truly are the "School of Rock." Their tutelage was, for me, most profoundly delivered during the intro for their classic tune "Walk On." Lead singer Bono dedicated the song to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese writer and activist who by rights should have been her country's prime minister. Instead, she's been under house arrest off and on for the past 20 years, persecuted by a brutal military junta.

Earlier in the evening, as fans began filling the seats, we had seen people with masks of a very attractive woman's face on the back of their heads. When the band launched into their performance of "Walk On," a long line of volunteers marched up on stage holding these masks in front of their faces.

This, we now realized, was Aung San Suu Kyi. I'm embarrassed to say it, but I really didn't know much about the woman.

Based on what my friend Bono told me — and the other 60,000 people in the crowd — she sounded like a remarkable person. If the band's plot was to trick us into thinking beyond ourselves, it worked in at least one instance. I was so intrigued by Suu Kyi's story I looked her up online the next day.

Aung San Suu Kyi is 64 years old now. Her father, Aung San, is kind of like the Burmese George Washington — except that he was assassinated when she was 2. Her mother was also a prominent leader and Burma's ambassador to India. Suu Kyi was educated at Oxford University in England and lived in New York for a time, working for the United Nations and writing.

In 1988 she returned home to care for her ailing mother and found her country in turmoil. Massive protests were occurring throughout the nation — especially during the famous 8/8/88 rallies that August — and an oppressive military responded by killing thousands of demonstrators. In her first public speech, Suu Kyi spoke out for democracy before a crowd of half-a-million people that year.

When the military banned gatherings of more than four citizens and started arresting and sentencing people without trial, Suu Kyi defiantly embarked on a speaking tour all across the country.

She helped form the National League for Democracy, which was dedicated to civil and nonviolent disobedience.

When her mother died that December, the funeral became a massive rallying cry for democratic government. Eventually the military government announced it would hold a general election, but in 1989 prohibited Suu Kyi from campaigning for office. The military continued to harass and murder her supporters. At one point, when soldiers aimed their rifles at her at the Irawaddy Delta, Suu Kyi calmly walked right up to them.

She was placed under house arrest in July, but the following May her National League for Democracy won a stunning 80 percent of Burma's parliamentary seats. As general-secretary of her party, Suu Kyi should have taken office as prime minister; instead the army leaders threw out the results and continued her imprisonment.

To put this into context, imagine if Democrats had won 80 of the 100 seats of the U.S. Senate, only to be told that the election was disallowed and Barack Obama was to be confined to his home in Chicago.

But while all this was going on, the rest of the world was taking notice. In 1991, Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Her sons accepted the honor on her behalf, and she used the $1.3 million prize money to start a health and education trust for her countrymen.

She was eventually released from house arrest in 1995, but when her husband Michael Aris, an Englishman dying of prostate cancer, asked to visit his wife in Burma one last time, the military junta refused. If she wanted to see her husband, they said, Suu Kyi would have to leave the country. She refused, realizing they wanted her to leave so they could bar her from returning home.

Her husband, the father of her two sons, died in 1999. He hadn't seen his wife since Christmas 1995. And Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest again in 2000.

She was released in 2002 and then arrested again the following year when scores of her supporters were massacred by uniformed government thugs in the town of Depayin. She remains a prisoner today. As recently as this past July, the head of the United Nations was prohibited from meeting with Suu Kyi during his visit to Burma.

It turns out Suu Kyi was actually the inspiration for "Walk On." U2 wrote the Grammy-winning song as a tribute to the activist for their 2000 album "All That You Can't Leave Behind' (which was also taken from this song.)

It was an amazing experience to see the band perform the song while dozens of ghostlike Suu Kyi faces haunted the stage and a stadium full of people sang along. Knowing something of the story behind the song, however, elevates it to a whole new level:

"And if the darkness is to keep us apart/And if the daylight feels like it's a long way off/And if your glass heart should crack/Before the second you turn back/Oh no, be strong.

"Walk on. Walk on."

People joke about U2 trying to save the world, but at the very least they're enlightening their audience a bit about the world around us. And we're having fun during the learning process.

But now I'm wondering why Suu Kyi isn't already a name on everyone's lips, the way Nelson Mandela's was during his incarceration.

D. Allan Kerr knows he will lose some street cred with his kids for saying this, but U2 has to be considered when debating the title of Greatest Rock Band Ever. Kerr may be reached at the_culling@hotmail.com.
seacoastline