1945
Overview:
Possibly one of the worlds’ hardest working freedom fighters, Aung San Suu Kyi rallied to release Burma from military rule. She risked her life for her country and still hasn’t given up the fight. She actively protested for many years and is still feared by the military officials in her country, who are too afraid to kill her but too afraid to let her out of her house.
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Aung San Suu Kyi
She is Burma's greatest freedom fighter.
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Country:
Burma
Type
of hero: Civil and Political Rights
Attributes:
Democratic Reform
Biography:
Aung San Suu Kyi was born in Rangoon. She was the daughter of Burma’s national hero, General Aung San who had led the struggle for independence from Britain. He was assassinated in 1947.
Her education spanned the globe, which included Burma, India, Oxford and Kyoto, Japan.
From 1969-1971she was Assistant Secretary to the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions for the United Nations in New York.
In 1972, she married Professor Michael Aris a British Scholar and had two sons with him who where born in England.
She returned to Myanmar in 1988 to look after her sick mother. While she was there, student protests broke out. For some time, Burma had been under the control of a military style dictatorship (junta). As the leadership of General Ne Win began to crumble, pro democracy activists saw their chance to push for democratic elections.
Mass uprisings against the Burma Socialist Programme Party (BSPP) were followed by a military response that killed thousands. Aung San Suu Kyi addressed a huge crowd in Rangoon and called for a democratic government. The military reinforced their control in the country and thousands more people were killed in the process.
In September 1988, the National League for Democracy (NLD) was formed with Aung San Suu Kyi as general secretary. On July 20 1989, she was placed under “house arrest” in an attempt to stop her continued participation in the democratic process. Despite this detention, the NLD overwhelmingly won the elections the following year. The military junta refused to recognise the results and did not hand over rule.
The military continued to extend the period of her detention despite pressure of individuals and organisations around the world. She was finally released from detention in 1995 and had hoped to develop a working relationship with the military junta. However, this has not happened. She continues to meet with and support pro democracy groups and speak with people in her gardens.
Her husband died of cancer in 1999. While the junta claimed they would allow her to visit her dying husband, she refused to leave the country in the belief that she would not be allowed to return. The Burmese regime had refused to grant Michael permission to visit his wife following his discovery that his cancer was terminal.
Citations
& References:
Links:
http://nobelprizes.com/nobel/peace/1991a.html
http://www.burmafund.org/nld/ASSK/aung_san_suu_kyi.htm
http://metalab.unc.edu/freeburma/assk/assk.html
http://www.dassk.com/
References
Uglow, J., (Ed) 1999 The Macmillan Dictionary of Women’s Biography London, Macmillan (p. 35)
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