Aung San Suu Kyi Daw

Aung San Suu Kyi Daw (b. 19 June 1945). Burmese Opposition leader The daughter of Burmese national hero Aung San, she studied at Rangoon, New Delhi, and Oxford. She held a number of posts in the UN, and in 1972 married a British academic, Michael Aris, settling down to a quiet private life. In 1988 she returned to Burma to care for her dying mother, and became involved in the turbulence of 1988, with its strong pro-democracy demonstrations. She was elected Secretary-General of the new National League for Democracy, which she directed to become a mass movement committed to non-violent change. She was arrested in 1989 and put under house arrest, though her party won the 1990 elections in a landslide victory. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, upon the nomination of V. Havel. Released from her confinement on 10 July 1995, her actions continued to be closely circumscribed by the military regime. She was largely forbidden to move outside the capital, Rangoon, and her contacts with the opposition throughout the country and with the outside world were severely restricted (in 1998, she was thus prevented from visiting her dying husband in Oxford). She was put under house arrest once again in 2000, from which she was freed in May 2002.

Myanmar