Suu Kyi wants more support from India for democracy in Myanmar

Myanmar's pro-democracy icon and Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi today said India should do more to support the democratic movement in her country instead of putting its trade and strategic interests in the forefront.

In a discussion after delivering the previously recorded Reith Lecture titled 'Securing freedom,' 66-year-old Suu Kyi told a BBC Radio 4 audience that she expected India to be committed to democratic principles for which it was known, and to do more to support the democracy movement in Burma.

Asked by political writer Timothy Garden Ash if she expected "the country of Gandhi" to do more to support the non-violent movement, Suu Kyi said: "Oh certainly, I think so, and I say that ad nauseum.

"I say that they should be firmly rooted in the democratic principles instead of putting trade and strategic interests at the forefront."

The second part of her lecture will be broadcast next Tuesday.

The annual Reith Lectures are named after the BBC's first director-general, Lord John Reith.

In the lecture, Suu Kyi reflected on her own experience under house arrest in Myanmar, and explored the universal human aspiration to be free and the spirit which drives people to dissent.

She also commented on the Arab Spring, comparing the event that triggered last December's revolution in Tunisia with the death of a student during a protest in Myanmar in 1988.

Replying to another question, she said that India has "a lot more to do with the government (in Myanmar) than we would wish them to."