Aung San Suu Kyi was greeted with another hero's welcome as thousands cheered the Myanmar democracy icon Sunday in a Norwegian fjord town that has a long connection with her freedom struggle.
The Rafto Foundation, based in Bergen, gave Suu Kyi her first international award 22 years ago, when Suu Kyi was under house arrest in the country also known as Burma, then ruled by a junta that only recently eased its iron grip.
Following rapid change in Myanmar over the past year under a quasi-civilian government, Suu Kyi is now on a five-nation European tour, which finally allowed her to deliver her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize speech in Oslo on Saturday.
On Sunday in Bergen, the Oxford-educated daughter of the country's independence hero was again feted by thousands of well-wishers who packed out a square in picturesque Bergen, the port known as the Gateway to the Fjords.
"My journey to Bergen began a long time ago when man first started to realise that all of us were born to live with human dignity," Suu Kyi, wearing a golden silk scarf and flowers in her hair, told the enthusiastic audience.
"We don't have to see the end of the road far away in one instant," she said of her country's ongoing transformation. "We just have to see the right way to get there. And we in Burma are trying to reach our goal."
She praised the people of Norway for their history of tolerance, mutual respect and multiculturalism, and thanked them for providing "such a warm sanctuary for people so different from you", including many Myanmar refugees.
"Norway is a cold land - I can't deny it," she said. "But you have warmed it for me with your affection, your generosity and, actually, what I think of as your gaiety, in spite of the weather," she said, to laughs from the crowd.
To achieve a harmonious society like Norway's in her own Southeast Asian homeland, she said, "we must learn to live together, to work together, to trust one another, and to respect one another."
It was a message Suu Kyi also stressed in a public meeting with Myanmar exiles from many different ethnic groups, including Burmese, Karen, Mon, Kachin and Chin, urging them to stay united, whatever their background.
"We have to make a plan for our children, for the future of our children," she said in Burmese, according to a translator, also urging parents to use online resources to teach their children about their ancestral home.
She touched on recent deadly communal clashes between majority Buddhists and a Muslim minority, saying "we really have to calm it down. We have to avoid saying and doing things that'll make the problem worse". "I never dreamt Aung San Suu Kyi would come to Norway," said one admirer, Lwan Moe Anickson, 28, an ethnic Karen who was born in a refugee camp on the Thai border and arrived in Norway five years ago.
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