YANGON (AFP) – Myanmar has invited democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi to attend a ceremony to honour her father, the country's liberation hero General Aung San, a government official said Sunday.
The 66-year-old is expected to attend the annual Martyrs' Day events on July 19 for the first time in nine years following her release from house arrest soon after November's controversial election.
An invitation was sent to Suu Kyi's Yangon home on Thursday, the official said, adding that the Nobel Peace Prize winner was thought likely to agree to attend the ceremony at the Yangon Martyrs' Mausoleum.
"Government officials, led by the Yangon mayor, will attend the ceremony in the morning," he added.
A friend of Suu Kyi confirmed she had received the invitation and told AFP she was planning to go to the event, which marks the assassination of her father and eight other independence leaders on July 19, 1947.
The official invitation comes in the same month that Suu Kyi tested the boundaries of her freedom with her first trip outside Yangon.
During the four-day excursion to the ancient city of Bagan earlier this month, she refrained from any overtly political activities that might have antagonised the government -- which remains dominated by the army.
Sources from Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party said she had planned to march to the Martyrs' Day ceremony with up to 500 of her supporters, potentially risking a clash with the authorities.
It was not clear whether Suu Kyi still plans to go ahead with the march now that she has an official invite.
The NLD, which won a landslide election victory two decades ago that was never recognised by the junta, was disbanded by the military rulers last year because it boycotted the recent vote, saying the rules were unfair.
Suu Kyi spent much of the last 20 years as a prisoner in her crumbling lakeside mansion and some observers think the new government would have no qualms about limiting her freedom again if she is perceived as a threat.
Part of the democracy icon's potency as a campaigner for political freedom stems from Myanmar's reverence for her father.
General Aung San is widely loved for winning independence from the British, but he died a year before colonial separation. The country was soon plunged into sporadic civil war and nearly half a century of junta rule from 1962.
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