Activist pays visit to Myanmar migrants

MAHACHAI, Thailand – Kicking off her first trip abroad in nearly a quarter-century, Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi offered encouragement today to impoverished migrants whose flight to neighboring Thailand is emblematic of the devastation wrought on her homeland by decades of misrule.

“Don’t feel down, or weak. History is always changing,” she told an exuberant crowd of thousands southwest of Bangkok. Many held signs saying, “We want to go home,” and Suu Kyi said her visit was aimed at learning how she could help them.

Suu Kyi, who arrived in Bangkok late Tuesday, left the capital today for the nearby town of Mahachai, home to Thailand’s largest population of Burmese migrants. Thousands of Myanmar’s downtrodden crowded around her and chanted: “Long Live Mother Suu!”

After speaking to the crowd, the Nobel Peace Prize winner met groups of migrant workers to learn about their lives.

Suu Kyi spent 15 of the last 24 years under house arrest, and when she was free she did not dare to leave Myanmar, not even to visit her dying husband, because she feared the military junta ruling at the time would not allow her to return. Now, in a sign of how much life has changed, the democracy activist and newly elected member of Parliament is traveling across Thailand and will begin a European tour in mid-June.