甚堪咀嚼的軼事,令人低首。摘自 Matt Frei - Bush on Burma:
On my last visit to Burma in 1999, I was walking through the once beautiful streets of Rangoon when an elderly woman in rags sidled up to me. Her face was smeared with dirt. Her ragged clothes were disintegrating on her crippled body.
I assumed she had come to beg. But instead of an outstretched hand, she offered a greeting in perfect English.
"Forgive me for asking," she said in a whisper. "But are you from England? I apologise for my appearance. It has become so difficult to be normal and dignified in this country. Thank you for visiting. Don't forget us. Please don't."
I wanted to ask her where she had learnt her English, why she had fallen on such hard times, where she lived, what she intended to do in the future?
But the old woman, who was probably not that old at all, sidled off into the shadows.
The Burmese have borne their suffering with plenty of dignity - few more so than Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition leader who won the general election in 1990 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.
意大利羅馬市長韋爾特羅尼展開昂山素姬的肖像海報,紀念她 61 歲生日
By rights she should be Burma's leader. Instead, she is the best-known dissident alive in the world today.