Reporters for the French newspaper Libération managed to sit down with the recently-released Burmese opposition leader in the office of her National League for Democracy party in the northern part of Rangoon. They’re unfortunately reserving the full transcript of the resulting interview for the paper’s paid on-line section, but some valuable extracts are placed here.

A couple interesting points emerge. One is basically a variation on Barack Obama’s “We are the ones we have been waiting for!” Just as with Nelson Mandela in South Africa, Suu Kyi in her long-term imprisonment has long been the focus of attention for those seeking to democratize Burmese society, so that it’s only her recent freedom that has provided new hope that progress can be made. Yet she takes care to mildly remonstrate against such a preoccupation, saying that success will depend on many others than just her, and particularly on the young people she now sees swelling the ranks of her supporters.

The other is that, from the tenor of the reporters’ questions, it seems that that pro-democracy movement within the country is already divided into a number of factions. Or is it? Could this merely be some sort of military government tactic? That’s what Suu Ky suspects – although she admits she hasn’t yet had enough full exposure to the national political scene to be able to know for sure – and she is anyway relying on all parties being willing to work together to advance at least their broadest, most-important goal of bringing back truly free and fair elections for choosing the government.

You might have heard about an incident earlier this week when some man (an American citizen) managed to swim across the lake guarding one side of the compound in Rangoon, Burma where dissident leader (and 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate) Aung San Suu Kyi has been under house-arrest for over 19 years. It seems he even stayed there for a couple days; it was only when he tried to swim back out the way he came that the Burmese police captured him, after which 20 officers then paid a visit to the compound, probably just to see what was going on, to question the residents there (basically Suu Kyi and her assistants) and check whether the guy had left anything behind. But that event was fairly widely-reported, including most certainly in the English-language press.

What I find more interesting is this article in France’s Nouvel Observateur (co-credited to the French news agency AFP) about Aung San Suu Kyi herself: she is not doing very well these days. First of all, she is 63 years old; I suppose that is an age when it is still possible to be in pretty good shape, except that being confined as essentially a prisoner of the dictatorial government of what is a very poor country is probably pretty much the opposite sort of environment to that which you would need to remain fit and healthy. (The article also notes that she refuses to accept the food sent in to her by the government.) According to the spokesman for her political party, the National League for Democracy (abbreviated as LND), Nyan Win, she can’t eat anymore, her blood pressure is low, and she suffers from dehydration. (And it is interesting that all this is coming out now; obviously this has something to do with the lake-swimmer’s visit, if only in the sense that journalists managed to contacted spokesman Nyan Win for comment on that incident and then asked follow-up questions about her current situation in general.)

The article mentions that, formally, the order putting her in house-arrest is supposed expire at the end of this month. Still, there can be little doubt that, one way or another (like a simple extension to the order), her status will be little changed after that point. The bigger question is whether she will even still be alive by then. And another one: What happens when she does die? Recall that August-September 2007 already saw widespread anti-government protests, with a prominent role played by Buddhist monks, sparked by nothing more than a government decision to remove subsidies on the price of various fuels.