Aung San Suu Kyi
(b. 1945), Burmese political leader and activist. Daughter of national hero and martyr Aung San (1915–1947), who was assassinated when she was only two years old, Aung San Suu Kyi was brought up in Myanmar (then Burma) until 1960, when her mother, Daw Khin Kyi, was appointed ambassador to India. In 1964 she started a B.A. degree in philosophy, politics, and economics at St. Hughes College, Oxford. After completion, she assisted Hugh Tinker in his research on Burma at the School ofOriental and African Studies in London and then moved in 1969 to New York, where she worked at the United Nations Secretariat. In 1972 she married Michael Aris, joining him in Bhutan, where she worked for two years as research officer on United Nations affairs for the Bhutan foreign affairs ministry. After her return to England, she gave birth to two sons, Alexander, in 1973, and Kim, in 1977. She briefly catalogued Burmese books in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford and then joined Aris at the Advanced Research Institute in Simla, northern India. She took up a one-year visiting fellowship in Kyoto in 1985–1986 to research the Japanese dimension of her father's biography, after which she returned to Simla on a fellowship. Shortly after returning to Oxford in 1987, she enrolled at the School of Oriental and African Studies for an advanced degree.
Aung San Suu Kyi speaking at a press conference in Yangon in September 1996. (STEPHEN G. DONALDSON PHOTOGRAPHY)Aung San Suu Kyi has been preoccupied with Myanmar throughout her life in terms of research interests and through family and social contacts. It was her mother's stroke in March 1988 that took Aung San Suu Kyi on a visit to Myanmar from which she did not return, not even for her husband's funeral in March 1999. In the wake of Ne Win's resignation, the pent-up desire for change within the country after three decades of military control thrust her into the role of a political leader bringing fresh ideas to a hitherto closed country. Her speech at the Shwedagon Pagoda on 26 August 1988 marked her public acceptance in Myanmar as the most promising national leader, much as her father's Shwedagon speeches had done in the 1940s. She subsequently cofounded the National League for Democracy, which won the May 1990 elections by a landslide majority and for which her popularity had been instrumental. The regime ignored the election outcome and she and her party members were subject to harassment and house arrest. Aung San Suu Kyi was kept under house arrest by the military-appointed State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) between 1989 and 1995 and has been prevented from traveling outside Yangon (Rangoon) for most of the time after that. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and continues to advocate nonviolence.
In September 2000, Aung San Suu Kyi and other leaders of the National League for Democracy were confined to their homes by military authorities. On 6 May 2002, the Myanmar government freed Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest. The action was seen by democracy advocates in Myanmar and outside observers as evidence that Myanmar's repressive regime might be entering a new era, giving rise to expectations that at least some political prisoners might be freed and that restrictions on the press may be lifted.
The Bibi-ka-Maqbara, modeled on the Taj Mahal and built as the mausoleom for Rabia Durtrani, the wife of Aurangzeb. (HULTON-DEUTSCH COLLECTION/CORBIS)Further Reading
Aung San Suu Kyi. (1998) "Heavenly Abodes and Human Development." Eleventh Pope Paul VI Memorial Lecture (delivered by Michael Aris on 3 November 1997 at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London). Bangkok Post (4 January).
——. (1997) Letters from Burma. London: Penguin.
Aung San Suu Kyi, Alan Clements, U Kyi Maung, and U Tin U. (1997) The Voice of Hope: Conversations with Alan Clements with Contributions by U Kyi Maung and U Tin U. London: Penguin.
Aung San Suu Kyi, and Michael Aris, eds. (1991) Freedom from Fear and Other Writings. New York: Viking.
Houtman, Gustaaf. (1999) Mental Culture in Burmese Crisis Politics: Aung San Suu Kyi and the National League for Democracy. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Foreign Studies Institute.
Victor, Barbara. (1998) The Lady: Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Laureate and Burma's Prisoner. Winchester, MA: Faber & Faber.
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