Property and the Lady

摘要

The halo has slipped from Aung San Suu Kyi's head, at least in the eyes of the monks and villagers of Ah Lay Daw. The Nobel peace prizewinner, who has resumed her career as a working politician in Myanmar, dismayed villagers earlier this month by giving her backing to the development of a copper mine on nearby Letpadaung Mountain, on land that was confiscated from them by the government. The villagers had hoped for more when Ms Suu Kyi agreed to chair an inquiry into the project in December, after the government broke up their protests by force. Although she won them compensation at market prices for their land, she dashed the villagers' hopes of returning it to arable use and, in some cases, of returning to their ancestral homes.