Burmese Dissident Flings Down Gauntlet

YANGON, Myanmar —  Despite a crackdown that detained hundreds of her supporters, Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader opened an opposition congress Sunday that signaled a renewed courage among her country’s people to stand up to their military rulers.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning dissident, threw down her biggest challenge to the ruling junta since her release from six years of house arrest last July.

In her opening speech, Suu Kyi said her National League for Democracy will “increase our actions to fulfill the will of the people and bring about national reconciliation.”

Her challenge signaled that she will no longer allow the regime to simply ignore her repeated calls for dialogue to bring democracy to Myanmar, formerly known as Burma.

Wearing a traditional sarong, her hair tied back in jasmine flowers, Suu Kyi spoke from a bamboo-and-thatch pavilion built especially for the event at her home. Banners displayed the emblem of her party, a fighting peacock.

Although 300 supporters applauded every sentence and chanted “Long live Aung San Suu Kyi,” only 17 were original delegates to the party congress, the opposition’s most important planned meeting since it swept parliamentary elections in July 1990.

At least 238 other delegates and 24 other party members were detained in a nationwide roundup last week intended to prevent the meeting, Suu Kyi said.

Suu Kyi’s party won 392 of 485 contested seats in the 1990 vote, but the military rulers never let the parliament convene.

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Suu Kyi took time out from the conference to make her weekly address to the public. About 8,000 people--the biggest crowd in years--gathered outside the gates of her compound, indicating a renewed courage among Burmese who many believed had been cowed by the regime.

More lively than usual, the crowd clapped and cheered as Suu Kyi and other opposition leaders said they had tired of waiting for the military regime formally known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council to meet their appeals for dialogue.

Even so, Suu Kyi held out an olive branch to the junta.

“We not only invite the people of our country, but also the authorities, to join us,” she said. “Because that is the only way we can bring good and happiness to our land.”

Suu Kyi said the meeting will be the first in a series of party gatherings, the next of which could be held within a few months.