People Power

Here's a Burmese joke. A man with toothache goes overseas to see a dentist. "Don't you have dentists back in Burma?" the dentist asks. "Of course," the man replies. "We're just not allowed to open our mouths."

This joke, retold in Emma Larkin's book Secret Histories , will elicit no smiles at the embattled Rangoon headquarters of the National League for Democracy (NLD). Its leader, the Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, has spent more than 10 years in detention since 1989. Her senior colleagues are too old to fight the "stressful, bruising campaign" against the junta, argues The...