Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s younger son, Htein Lin, also known as Kim Aris, will temporarily become a Buddhist monk in Rangoon during the traditional water festival next week.
Kim will travel to Burma during the annual "Thingyan" celebrations, which also mark Burmese New Year, where he will visit his mother before entering a monastery and joining the Sangha, the Buddhist monkhood.
Daw Leh Leh, an executive member of Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday: “Ko Htein Lin will arrive on April 10 or 12. He has got a visa already. We heard that he will temporarily join the monkhood.”
This is the first time this year that Kim will see his mother. He visited her on Nov. 23 last year, just 10 days after the Nobel Peace Prize laureate was freed from house arrest.
NLD member Kyaw Htoo Naing said that Suu Kyi will also ask several NLD members to draw lots to choose who will present monk's robes to Kim before offering food to him and other monks in an alms ceremony.
Suu Kyi, the daughter of independence hero Aung San, married the late British professor Michael Aris in 1972 while she was studying at Oxford. They had two sons, Alexander and Kim, whose Burmese names are Myint San Aung and Htein Lin respectively.
Suu Kyi, who won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her nonviolent struggle for democracy, was first arrested in 1989 when Kim was 11 and elder son Alexander 16.
Her husband, Michael Aris died of prostate cancer in 1999 at age 53, after having been denied visas by the Burmese authorities to see his wife for the three years leading up to his death.
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