Hollywood actress expelled from Burma over her movie role

Yeoh spent time with the recently freed opposition leader in December, when she traveled to Burma with Aung San Suu Kyi’s son, Kim Aris, according to the Daily Telegraph.

“She did not have the chance to enter [Burma] again,” said a Burmese official, according to the Telegraph. “She was deported straight away on the first flight after arriving at [Rangoon] International Airport.”

“When it comes to being kicked out and deported, it’s very arbitrary,” said a writer who has traveled there frequently in the last few years, though has also been denied entry on several occasions. “Meeting with Suu Kyi is very on the edge, because it’s clearly anti-government. If you go to her headquarters, there’s a very good chance you’ll be taken to the airport directly afterwards or they won’t let you back in next time.”

The writer, who didn’t want to be named so as not to harm the chances of getting into the country in the future, said the Burmese authorities have a long blacklist of people they won’t allow in.

Yeoh was likely placed on the blacklist because she is a high-profile celebrity and didn’t hide the fact that she met with Aung San Suu Kyi on her last visit.

And of course she’s making a sympathetic movie of Aung San Suu Kyi. Yeoh described the film as an “incredible love story that has political turmoil within.” Presumably, she’s referring to Aung San Suu Kyi’s marriage to British historian Michael Aris, who died of cancer in 1999 in England. Aung San Suu Kyi could not visit him because she believed she wouldn’t be allowed to return to Burma. In the last 10 years of his life, he and his wife had only seen each other five times.

Aung San Suu Kyi spent most of the past 20 years under house arrest. She was freed last November, just days after elections in the country that were criticized by the international community as a sham and which her party, the National League for Democracy, boycotted.

After her release, she gave her first video broadcast interview to Foreign Policy, which chose her as one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers of 2010.

Last week, Aung San Suu Kyi testified before the U.S. Congress — via video — for the first time ever, urging the United States to do more to push Burma on the lack of democratic progress.

“We are seeing that the regime is not taking action against what Aung San Suu Kyi is doing and she is relatively free to attend meetings in her office and meet with whom she wants,” said Aung Din, executive director of the U.S. Campaign for Burma. “This is their way of reaching out to the international community, which has been putting pressure on them.”

Din said the regime will inevitably crack down again.

“[The regime] has opened the door a little, but their way of opening the door is to say you have to accept and obey the system and work within it. They have done it in the past. Really, the door is not open.”