Aung San Suu Kyi.

I picked up the latest copy of Time Magazine last night and thumbed diligently through the pages that detailed the works and wonders that are the 100 Most Influential People in the world.  I am constantly amazed whenever I take a peak behind the curtain and realize that there are countless people out in this world that are sacrificing everything to change things.  One of those heroes was a woman whom I had never heard of before.  Here name is Aung San Suu Kyi.  She is a political prisoner in Burma.  

Last night I wrote about the horrible cyclone that devastated that country last week, as well as how their ruling military junta has denied aid to flow into the country, effectively killing their own people.  Today, I want to continue that conversation by highlighting the brutality and injustice of their government.  Below is a short profile of Aung San Suu Kyi and the struggle that she is being persecuted for.  It's from Time and it was written by no other than Anjelica Huston, who I believe was in "The Preacher's Wife."  How about them apples? 

Aung San Suu Kyi. 

Burma's imprisoned icon calls on the world to help free her nation. 

By Anjelica Huston. 

For nearly two decades, Nelson Mandela languished in global obscurity while imprisoned under the apartheid regime in South Africa. Then, during the 1980s, millions around the world mobilized an effort for his release and an end to apartheid. Now Mandela is a global icon for human rights.

Today's Mandela is Aung San Suu Kyi, a woman who has been held under arrest for 12 years in Burma. Suu Kyi, 62, has been a courageous advocate for human rights and democracy, and she is the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize recipient. She became a target of her country's military junta after spearheading a nationwide effort to end decades of military rule. The current regime is exceedingly brutal—incarcerating up to 2,000 political prisoners, recruiting more child soldiers than any other country in the world and carrying out a campaign of rape against ethnic-minority women. It has pursued a scorched-earth policy against minorities, destroying medical clinics, food supplies and homes.

Suu Kyi has appealed to the global community to take up the Burmese cause, saying "Please, use your liberty to promote ours." It took decades for us to come to Mandela's aid. Suu Kyi—and the people of Burma—are waiting to be freed now.

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And that is what we are dealing with.  We are in a world where a Nobel prize winner could be locked behind bars for speaking out against an oppressive, and might I add once more-illegal-government.  And we are not doing anything.  Does Burma have oil?  I guess not.  So enough of this cursing of the darkness- what can be done in the here, in the dim but urgent now? 

Well, while the nations and the UN have had difficulty providing aid on a mass scale because of Burma's reclusive government, smaller, non-profit aid organizations have been able to provide some help.  The best bet, at the moment, is to feed money into trustworthy organizations such as World Vision, who are on the ground right now distributing food.  You can go to this link and make a donation right away: http://www.worldvision.org/Worldvision/eappeal.nsf/egift-disaster-response-southern-asia-cyclone-relief?OpenForm&campaign=11365555&cmp=KNC-11365555

This is an immediate call to an immediate need.  And please, do not believe the lie that making a donation of 25 bucks is going to absolve anybody of their further responsibility.  I'm pretty sure that we are made to take care of one another in a literal, practical way.  We are not just to feed people by writing checks.  I am pretty sure that we are to feed people with our own hands, carried by our own feed to meet people where they are.  At the moment, much of the water in Burma is contaminated.  About 2,000,000 people have been displaced from their homes.  The threat of communicable diseases is something like we have never seen before.  We are talking about rotting corpses piled high and floating in flood waters.  This is gruesome, and this is reality. 

I don't know what we can do at the moment to be who we are called to be.  I think one solution is to advocate the rights of people like Aung San Suu Kyi.  A free Burma means that more people can get visas and can practically help when disaster strikes.  A free Burma translates to food for 98,000 people being delivered and consumed and not just sitting at the airport, seized by the military.  

If nothing else, perhaps it is in this disaster that the world will pay attention and will leverage its collective power and will to free the people that desperately want it.  This is not about oil, this is not about revenge.  It's not even about politics.  It's about being human and answering the common question that is imprinted on each of our DNA.  It's about redeeming a broken world.  It can be done, it is being done, and it will be made complete one day. Just wait and see.