Activists tap celebrity power for Myanmar's Aung San Suu Kyi

By Paul Eckert, Asia Correspondent

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Hollywood actors including Will Ferrell and Sylvester Stallone have joined a monthlong video campaign to win support for jailed Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Comedy film star Ferrell's appearance in a brief online video on Thursday will be the first of 30 daily Web video spots designed to raise the profile of Suu Kyi, the world's only imprisoned Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

The videos depart from the standard humanitarian appeal formula with offbeat and ironic skits to draw the attention to the plight of Suu Kyi and the people of the Southeast Asian country, formerly called Burma.

Ferrell's video pokes fun at his difficulty pronouncing Suu Kyi's name, while a skit by Academy Award-nominated "Juno" actress Ellen Page draws a Hitler mustache on a portrait of reclusive Myanmar military junta leader Than Shwe.

"What we're hoping is that on the 31st day, the United States will know Aung San Suu Kyi, they'll know the dictator, and they'll know what's going on over there," said Jack Healey, founder of the Human Rights Action Center and former director of Amnesty International USA.

"We're hoping we'll have literally a million supporters for the U.S. Campaign for Burma that gives Aung San Suu Kyi a constituency she's never had before but one she deserves," Healey told Reuters.

The Washington-based U.S. Campaign for Burma will run the Web video series on the sites www.burmaitcantwait.org and on the social shopping site www.fanista.com.

"The global campaign for Burma has been small and we want to make that much bigger," said Jeremy Woodrum, co-founder of the U.S. Campaign for Burma.