Aung San Suu Kyi

BURMESE POLITICAL LEADER
1945–

Aung San Suu Kyi, like the former South African leader Nelson Mandela (b. 1918), is an international symbol of peaceful resistance to an oppressive regime that has kept her under house arrest for years and also confined her to Myanmar's most notorious prison. In 1991, she won the Nobel Peace Prize for leadership of Myanmar's pro-democracy movement, which opposed a military junta that took control of the Texas-sized country in 1988.

Aung San Suu Kyi was born in the capital city of Rangoon in 1945. Her father, nationalist leader General Aung San, negotiated Burma's independence from the British. Her mother, Daw (Ma) Khin Kyi, was a senior nurse at Rangoon General Hospital who became a prominent public figure after the assassination of Aung San in 1947.

Suu Kyi was educated in India, where her mother was the Burmese ambassador, and at Oxford University in Britain. While in New York for graduate study, she worked for a time on the staff of the United Nations, then headed by Burmese Secretary General U Thant (1909–1974). In Britain, Suu Kyi met and in 1972 married Michael Aris, an Oxford Himalayan specialist and professor with whom she had two sons. The couple traveled to Bhutan, where Suu Kyi worked as a research officer in the Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs. While raising her children, Suu Kyi initiated a career in writing and research, and in 1984 she published her father's biography.

In 1988, Suu Kyi returned to Rangoon to care for her ailing mother. In August, she began to write and speak out in support of Burma's pro-democracy movement, which developed after the downfall of long-time military dictator General Ne Win (1911–2002). Defying a military crackdown that began in mid-September, she formed a political party called the National League for Democracy, endorsing a policy of nonviolence and civil disobedience. She continued her political activities, speaking to large crowds around the country despite growing military harassment and a February 1989 prohibition against her running for office. In July of 1989, Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest. Even so, her party won 82 percent of the popular vote in the 1990 elections, which the military regime refused to recognize.

Because of her courageous opposition to Burma's (now Myanmar's) oppressive regime, Suu Kyi was awarded a number of international human rights prizes, including the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.

On July 10, 1995, Suu Kyi was released from house arrest, after six years of confinement. Although her activities in Burma were still restricted by the regime, she continued to communicate with a supportive international audience. As long as Suu Kyi remained in Burma, she was an embarrassment to the government. Fearful of being denied re-entry, she declined to leave her homeland when her husband was fatally stricken with prostate cancer. Michael Aris died in 1999.

In September 2000, Suu Kyi was again arrested and put under house arrest until May 6, 2002. Her freedom was short-lived. On May 30, 2003, her

motorcade of democratic activists was attacked in an ambush. Up to seventy people were believed to have been killed. She was arrested and, following a period of imprisonment, she was again put under house arrest. Despite international efforts to negotiate her release, as of 2005 she remains under house arrest.

Dalai Lama; Gandhi, Mahatma; King Jr., Martin Luther; Mandela, Nelson; Myanmar (Burma); Political Protest.

Abrams, Irwin, ed. "Aung San Suu Kyi—Biography." In Nobel Lectures, Peace 1991–1995. Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co., 1999. <http://nobelprize.org/peace/lau reates/1991/kyi-bio.html>.

Aung San Suu Kyi. Freedom from Fear, and Other Writings, 2nd ed., rev. New Delhi, India: Penguin Books, 1995.

Fink, Christina. Living Silence: Burma Under Military Rule. New York: Zed Books, 2001.

Victor, Barbara. The Lady: Aung San Suu Kyi: Nobel Laureate and Burma's Prisoner. New York: Faber and Faber Inc., 1998.

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