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Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi is a pro-democracy activist and leader of the National League for Democracy in Burma. She is a noted prisoner of conscience and advocate of nonviolent resistance. She is currently under detention, with the Burmese junta repeatedly extending her detention. According to the results of the 1990 general election, Suu Kyi earned the right to be Prime Minister, as leader of the winning National League for Democracy party, but her detention by the military junta prevented her from assuming that role.

Being Beneath the Dirt

Aung San Suu Kyi grew up with her mother. Her father was a general in the Burmese army and negotiated Burma’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1947; he was assassinated by his rivals in the same year. In her adulthood, lived abroad, married, and gave birth to two sons. Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988 to take care of her ailing mother. By coincidence, in that year, the long-time leader of the socialist ruling party stepped down, leading to mass demonstrations for democratization. These demonstrations were violently suppressed. A new military junta took power.

Branching Out Roots for Balance

Influenced by both Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence and by more specifically Buddhist concepts, she became involved with politics. In 1988, she helped found the National League for Democracy, working for democratization, and in 1990, the military junta called a general election. Suu Kyi represented the NLD as a candidate for Prime Minister, and her party won the election decisively. Under normal circumstances, she would have assumed the office of Prime Minister. Instead, the results were nullified, and the military refused to hand over power. This resulted in an international outcry, and Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest at her home.

Since the time of her arrest, the junta has prevented Aung San Suu Kyi from meeting with her party supporters and international visitors, including her family. She was offered freedom only if she left the country. When she was released from house arrest in 1995, the junta made it clear that if she left the country to visit her family in the UK, she could not return to Burma. When her husband, a British citizen, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997, the Burmese government denied him an entry visa. Aung San Suu Kyi remained in Burma, and never again saw her husband, who died in 1999. In 2000, the junta put her under house arrest again, where she remained separated from her children, who were living in the UK.

Rising like a Surfacing Stem

In 2002, following secret confidence-building negotiations led by the United Nations, the government released her, and Aung San Suu Kyi proclaimed “a new dawn for the country.” However, a year later, a government-sponsored mob attacked her caravan in the northern village of Depayin, murdering and wounding many of her supporters. Aung San Suu Kyi fled the scene with the help of her driver, but was arrested upon reaching her destination. The government imprisoned her at Insein Prison in Yangon. In the following months, she underwent a hysterectomy, and the government again placed her under house arrest.

Enduring several periods of detention, she has spent 13 years under arrest, as of October, 2008. Suu Kyi’s house arrest term continues to be extended by the Burmese government, flouting direct appeals from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, urging the Burmese government to release Aung San Suu Kyi. In the Spring of 2008, Myanmar extended Suu Kyi’s detention for another year - keeping her confined to her residence for a sixth straight year.

Reaching Fruition

In December 2007, the US Congress voted unanimously to award Aung San Suu Kyi the Congressional Gold Medal. She is the first recipient in American history to receive the prize while imprisoned. In the same year, she was given Honorary Canadian citizenship by the Government of Canada in 2007. She is only the fourth person in history to receive this honor. Suu Kyi won the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990, and in 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru peace prize by the Government of India for her peaceful and non-violent struggle under a military dictatorship.

Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. The decision of the Nobel Committee notes: “Suu Kyi’s struggle is one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Asia in recent decades. She has become an important symbol in the struggle against oppression…In awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 1991 to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to honor this woman for her unflagging efforts and to show its support for the many people throughout the world who are striving to attain democracy, human rights and ethnic conciliation by peaceful means.” Her sons accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf, and Aung San Suu Kyi used prize money, valued at $1.3 million, to establish a health and education trust for the Burmese people.

Leaving a Legacy

In 2008, 59 world leaders released a letter demanding Myanmar’s military government free Suu Kyi and other political prisoners. The signatories include three former US presidents: Jimmy Carter, George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton; former UK prime minister Margaret Thatcher; Nobel Peace laureates Lech Wa??sa and Kim Dae-jung and others. In the same year, nine Nobel Peace prize winners: Archbishop Desmond Tutu, The Dalai Lama, Shirin Ebadi, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Mairead Corrigan, Rigoberta Menchú, Prof. Elie Wiesel, Betty Williams and Jody Williams; released a statement calling for the rulers of Burma to “create the necessary conditions for a genuine dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi and all concerned parties and ethnic groups in order to achieve an inclusive national reconciliation with the direct support of the United Nations.”

Disclaimer: Mud Puds bios are derived from widely-accepted “truths,” as shared in the Public Domain. In the absence of first-hand accounts, information is presented as: “Factual, as far as we know.”