Perspective

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi (pronounced Daw Aung Sawn Sue Chee) is one of the world’s most renowned freedom fighters and advocates of nonviolence, having served as the figurehead for Burma’s struggle for democracy since 1988. Born on June 19th, 1945 to Burma’s independence hero, Aung San, Aung San Suu Kyi was educated in Burma, India, and the United Kingdom. Her father, Aung San, founded the modern Burmese army and negotiated Burma’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1947; he was assassinated by his rivals in the same year. She grew up with her mother, Khin Kyi, and two brothers, Aung San Lin and Aung San Oo in Rangoon. She acquired her education at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, obtaining a B.A. degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics in 1969 and a Ph.D. at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 1985. She was elected an Honourary Fellow in 1990.  In 1972, Aung San Suu Kyi married Dr. Michael Aris, a scholar of Tibetan culture, living abroad in Bhutan.

In 1988, while living in London, she returned to Burma to nurse her dying mother, and was plunged into the country’s nationwide uprising that had just begun. Influenced by both Mahatma Gandhi’s philosophy of non-violence and by more specifically Buddhist concepts, Aung San Suu Kyi entered politics to work for democratization, helped found the National League for Democracy on 27 September 1988. Joining the newly-forming National League for Democracy political party, Aung San Suu Kyi gave numerous speeches calling for freedom and democracy. One of her most famous speeches is the “Freedom From Fear” speech, which begins: It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.

The military regime responded to the uprising with brute force, shooting and otherwise killing up to 10,000 demonstrators, students, women, children, and others in a mater of months. Unable to maintain its grip on power, the regime was forced to call for a general election in 1990. In the election the National League for Democracy won decisively. Being the NLD’s candidate, Aung San Suu Kyi under normal circumstances 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. Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest at her home on University Avenue  in Rangoon. She has won numerous international awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize, Sakharov Prize from the European Parliament, United States Presidential Medal of Freedom, and Jawaharlal Nehru Award from India. She has called on people around the world to join the struggle for freedom in Burma, saying “Please use your liberty to promote ours.” Her sons Alexander and Kim accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf. Aung San Suu Kyi used the Nobel Peace Prize’s 1.3 million USD prize money to establish a health and education trust for the Burmese people.

Aung San Suu Kyi has been in and out of arrest ever since. She was held from 1989-1995, and again from 2000-2002. Afterward the government continued to restrict her movement both inside the country and abroad. During Aung San Suu Kyi’s first year of freedom, she was only permitted to take short trips in and around her home city of Rangoon and did not travel outside Myanmar. She continued, however, to serve as the vocal leader of the NLD and push for democracy. The military government, meanwhile, closed schools, ignored the healthcare needs of the people, and forced many citizens into slave labor while torturing and imprisoning others. She was again arrested and placed behind bars in May 2003 after the Depayin massacre, during which her envoy was attacked and up to 100 of her supporters were beaten to death by the regime’s cronies. She has moved from prison back into house arrest in late 2003 and has been held there ever since. Though she is not yet away of military government watch, but her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights become an icon of Myanmar’s struggle for democracy and of the global struggle against oppression.