Opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi left her home in the Myanmar capital to visit a provincial party office on Friday in her first real test of freedom since being released from house arrest, witnesses said. All her attempts to leave Yangon in recent years have been blocked by the military. Her most recent spell in house arrest came after she made several high-profile attempts to travel outside Yangon in 2000 in defiance of travel restrictions. Suu Kyi was driven away from her lakeside home in a car at around 9 am heading for Shwepyitha, some 20 miles (32 km) north of Yangon, officials said. The secretary of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, U Lwin, told Reuters the 56-year-old Nobel Peace laureate would meet senior party officials in the township. If successful, it would be her first trip much beyond the outskirts of Yangon since October 1997, party officials said.
"She is going to Shwepyitha this morning," U Lwin said. "It will be a routine visit to see the situation at the reopened township office."
Suu Kyi was released from 19 months of house arrest on May 6 after protracted secretive talks with the military generals who have ruled the impoverished country for the last 40 years.
She said in a radio interview on Thursday night that all restrictions on her movements had been lifted and although this had yet to be tested she did not anticipate problems. "I can move about freely and invite any guest I want to. No disturbance at all. I don't think there will be any disturbance when I visit township offices," Suu Kyi told the Burmese-language service of Radio Free Asia. Previous travel attempts blocked a bid to travel south of the capital by road in August 2000 led to a nine-day roadside stand-off when police blocked her car. She was eventually forcibly returned home, sparking an outcry from the international community. A month later Suu Kyi was stopped from travelling by rail to the city of Mandalay and placed under house arrest where she remained until her release last week.
Diplomats say the junta has been afraid in the past that Suu Kyi could stir up rebellion in the provinces if she is allowed to roam free, holding public meetings and focusing opposition to the generals' autocratic rule. Her NLD party won the country's last elections in 1990 but has never been allowed to govern, stirring international anger and a successful campaign to isolate Myanmar, formerly known as Burma. Suu Kyi, the charismatic daughter of Myanmar's independence hero Aung San, has been held under house arrest for much of the last decade. But the attitude of the government appears to have softened over the last year, thanks in part to talks brokered by U.N. special envoy Razali Ismail, who has visited the country seven times over the past two years. Razali said at the United Nations on Thursday that Suu Kyi's release indicated Myanmar was on track for national reconciliation and democratic reform. "Her release sets the momentum," he said. Bureau Report