“She is beautiful and it is wonderful to be here!” exclaimed Archbishop Desmond Tutu after meeting his fellow Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi at her house in Yangon on Tuesday.
The jovial South African archbishop had long proclaimed himself a fan of The Lady. On Tuesday, he finally had a chance to tell her in person.
“We're looking forward to when the country is truly free,” he told reporters with Suu Kyi at his side. “And then you see just how much the world admires her—she is a total icon!
“The potential of this country is immense and we want to see that potential fully realized,” he continued. “No ethnic strife or all the problems with people of different faiths.
“I think that you should encourage movement, anything that moves towards freedom should be encouraged,” he said.
The Myanmar pro-democracy leader had traveled from Naypyitaw where she was attending Parliament to Yangon specifically to see Tutu, who won the Peace Prize in 1984 for his role in the fight against Apartheid.
Archbishop Tutu had arrived in the country on Monday, and met some political dissidents on Tuesday morning.
A Myanmar government official said that Tutu was scheduled to visit the ancient Buddhist temples of Bagan and Inle Lake in Shan State before departing on a ship heading to India on March 1.
A US embassy official said Tutu would give a speech at the American Center in Yangon on Wednesday.
Tutu, along with several other noted Nobel Peace Prize laureates, visited refugee camps in Thailand in February 1993 after being denied entry to Myanmar, then known as Burma, while Suu Kyi was under house arrest.
