Yangon: Military-ruled Myanmar has granted a visa to democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi's younger son so that he can visit his mother following her release from house arrest, her lawyer said Monday.
Kim Aris, 33, arrived in Bangkok from his home in Britain in anticipation of the release of his mother, who was freed on November 13 after more than seven consecutive years confined to her lakeside home in Yangon.
"He has got his visa already and he is trying to come today," Suu Kyi's lawyer Nyan Win told AFP on Monday, adding that the 65-year-old opposition leader planned to welcome her son at Yangon airport.
During her detention, Suu Kyi had no telephone or Internet access and only limited contact with the outside world.
The daughter of Myanmar's assassinated independence hero General Aung San has not seen Aris or her elder son Alexander for about 10 years and has never met her grandchildren.
Aris had an "emotional" telephone conversation with his mother on the evening of her release, according to the British embassy in Bangkok.
Sources at Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) party said he would travel from the Thai capital on Tuesday morning if he could not arrange a flight for Monday.
Suu Kyi, who had been locked up for 15 of the past 21 years, was released less than a week after a widely criticised election that cemented the military regime's decades-long grip on power but was dismissed by many as a charade.
When her freedom was granted, crowds of jubilant supporters gathered outside her home to glimpse the charismatic dissident, seen by many as the best hope for democratic change after almost half a century of military rule.
Her long struggle for her country has come at a high personal cost: her husband, a British academic, died in 1999, and in the final stages of his battle with cancer the junta refused him a visa to see his wife.
Many believe that if she were to leave Myanmar - formerly known as Burma - the ruling generals would never allow her to return.
Her sons collected the Nobel peace prize on behalf of their mother in 1991, but have otherwise tended to avoid the media spotlight.
Even though she is now free, will not travel to Oslo before 2011 or 2012 at the earliest to celebrate her laureate status, the head of the Nobel Institute said Friday.
"Now that she is out of her house arrest, the Nobel Committee renewed its invitation to her," Geir Lundestad told AFP, adding however that "she has so much to do in Burma that she cannot leave."
The opposition leader swept the NLD to victory in 1990 elections but the results were never recognised by the junta. Her party boycotted this month's election, leaving the opposition deeply divided.
She now faces the task of reunifying and strengthening the pro-democracy movement.
