Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi (born June 19, 1945, Rangoon, Burma [now Yangon, Myanmar]) is a politician and opposition leader of Myanmar, daughter of Aung San (a martyred national hero of independent Burma) and Khin Kyi (a prominent Burmese diplomat), and winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1991. She held multiple governmental posts from 2016, including that of state counselor, which essentially made her the de facto leader of the country. She was sidelined in February 2021 when the military seized power.

Early life

Aung San Suu Kyi was two years old when her father, then the de facto prime minister of what would shortly become independent Burma, was assassinated. She attended schools in Burma until 1960, when her mother was appointed ambassador to India. After further study in India, she attended the University of Oxford, where she met her future husband, the British scholar Michael Aris. She and Aris had two children and lived a rather quiet life until 1988, when she returned to Burma to nurse her dying mother, leaving her husband and sons behind. There the mass slaughter of protesters against the brutal and unresponsive rule of military strongman U Ne Win led her to speak out against him and to begin a nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights in that country.

Activism and house arrest

In July 1989 the military government of the newly named Union of Myanmar (since 2011, Republic of the Union of Myanmar) placed Suu Kyi under house arrest in Yangon (Rangoon) and held her incommunicado. The military offered to free her if she agreed to leave Myanmar, but she refused to do so until the country was returned to civilian government and political prisoners were freed. The National League for Democracy (NLD), which Suu Kyi had cofounded in 1988, won more than 80 percent of the parliamentary seats that were contested in 1990, but the results of that election were ignored by the military government (in 2010 the military government formally annulled the results of the 1990 election). The news that Suu Kyi was being given the Nobel Prize set off intense vilification of her by the government, and, since she was still being detained, her son, Alexander Aris, accepted the award in her place.

Suu Kyi was freed from house arrest in July 1995, although restrictions were placed on her ability to travel outside Yangon. The following year she attended the NLD party congress, but the military government continued to harass both her and her party. In 1998 she announced the formation of a representative committee that she declared was the country’s legitimate ruling parliament. Michael Aris died in London in early 1999. Prior to his death, the military junta denied him a visa to visit Suu Kyi in Myanmar, and Suu Kyi, anticipating that she would not be allowed to reenter the country if she left, remained in Myanmar.

The junta once again placed Suu Kyi under house arrest from September 2000 to May 2002, ostensibly for having violated restrictions by attempting to travel outside Yangon. Following clashes between the NLD and pro-government demonstrators in 2003, the government returned her to house arrest. Calls for her release continued throughout the international community in the face of her sentence’s annual renewal, and in 2009 a United Nations body declared her detention illegal under Myanmar’s own law. In 2008 the conditions of her house arrest were somewhat loosened, allowing her to receive some magazines as well as letters from her children, who were both living abroad.

In May 2009, shortly before her most recent sentence was to be completed, Suu Kyi was arrested and charged with having breached the terms of her house arrest after an intruder (a U.S. citizen) entered her house compound and spent two nights there. In August she was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, though the sentence immediately was reduced to 18 months, and she was allowed to serve it while remaining under house arrest. At the time of her conviction, the belief was widespread both within and outside Myanmar that this latest ruling was designed to prevent Suu Kyi from participating in multiparty parliamentary elections (the first since 1990) scheduled for 2010.

That suspicion became reality through a series of new election laws enacted in March 2010: one prohibited individuals from any participation in elections if they had been convicted of a crime (as she had been in 2009), and another disqualified anyone who was (or had been) married to a foreign national from running for office. In support of Suu Kyi, the NLD refused to reregister under those new laws (as was required) and was disbanded. The government parties faced little opposition in the November 7, 2010, election and easily won an overwhelming majority of legislative seats amid widespread allegations of voter fraud. Suu Kyi was released from house arrest six days after the election and vowed to continue her opposition to military rule.

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