Suu Kyi meets Myanmar youths
Myanmar democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi met around 200 young people at her party's headquarters yesterday as part of her efforts to reach out to a new generation following her release.
It is the duty of Myanmar's youth to "safeguard our future", Suu Kyi told the gathering of under-35s, who have grown up with the opposition leader under house arrest for most of the past two decades.
"We want to know what is on our youths' minds," the 65-year-old said in an opening speech.
Young people attending appeared sceptical about Suu Kyi's power to change their impoverished country, which has been under military rule for nearly half a century.
"People in Myanmar are relying on only one person," 23-year-old Tin Zaw Hein told AFP.
The student from Pakokku town in central Myanmar said Suu Kyi was "not a powerful person".
"She cannot do anything although we beg with our hands for something," he said.
A recent controversial election -- the first in two decades -- has been decried as a sham by many in the West and has left the military and its political proxies with overwhelming control of a new parliament.
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won the 1990 vote by a landslide but was never allowed to take power.
The opposition leader was locked up and sidelined during the recent vote and her party was disbanded for boycotting the poll.
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