Aung San Suu Kyi

Brief Biography
Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of one of Burma's most
cherished heroes, the martyred General Aung San, who led his
country's fight for independence from Great Britain in the
1940s and was killed for his beliefs in 1947. Suu Kyi has
equaled her father's heroics with her calm but passionate
advocacy of freedom and democracy in the country now called
Myanmar, a name chosen by one of the most insensitive and
brutal military dictatorships in the world.

The ruling junta ? "political party" would be too generous a
concession ? goes by the Orwellian name of the State Law and
Order Restoration Council (SLORC). Burma, or Myanmar, has a
population of 45 million and is Southeast Asia's second
largest country (in area) after Indonesia.

The news event that brought Suu Kyi back into prominence in
May 2002 was her release from 19 months of house arrest in her
barricaded villa in Yangon, formerly Rangoon. The United
Nations helped to negotiate her release this time.

There was outrage around the world in 2000 when Suu Kyi tried
to leave Yangon, only to be thwarted by authorities. In August
of that year Suu Kyi, her driver and 14 members of her pro-
democracy party were confined in two cars on the side of the
road outside of Yangon. She endured a similar roadside
standoff for 13 days in 1998, during which time she suffered
severe dehydration and had to be returned to her home by
ambulance.

Suu Kyi (pronounced Soo Chee) was two years old when her
father ? the de facto prime minister of newly independent
Burma ? was assassinated. Though a Buddhist ? the predominant
religion of Burma ? she was educated at Catholic schools and
left for India in her mid-teens with her mother, who became
the Burmese ambassador to India. Suu Kyi went to England where
she studied at Oxford University. There she met Michael Aris,
the Tibetan scholar whom she married. They had two sons,
Alexander and Kim.

A watershed in her life was 1988, when Suu Kyi received a call
from Burma that her mother had suffered a stroke and did not
have long to live. Suu Kyi returned to Burma, leaving her
husband and two children behind in England, having cautioned
them years earlier that duty may one day call her back to her
homeland.

She arrived back in Burma to nurse her mother at a time of a
burgeoning pro-democracy movement, fueled by the energy and
idealism among the country's young people. There were
demonstrations against the repressive, one-party socialist
government. Suu Kyi was drawn into the pro-democracy movement,
which was snuffed out by SLORC, which seized power on
September 18, 1988. Thousands of pro-democracy advocates were
killed.

Next came a general election in 1990, which political parties
were allowed to contest. Suu Kyi headed the National League
for Democracy (NLD), which won a landslide victory, with 80
per cent support. This was not be tolerated by the SLORC
leaders, who refused to recognize the election results. Worse,
SLORC put the elected pro-democracy leaders under house
arrest, including Suu Kyi.

Despite the restrictions of house arrest, Suu Kyi continued to
campaign for democracy, and for this she won the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1991.

One of Suu Kyi's most dramatic speeches was in 1995, soon
after she was released from nearly six years of house arrest,
when she spoke to a global women's conference in Beijing. She
didn't appear at the conference, but spoke to the
international gathering by means of a video smuggled out of
Burma. Suu Kyi always expresses herself with calm conviction
and calm passion, which reflects her Buddhist upbringing. She
is Gandhian in her synergistic mixture of force and restraint.
In her speech, she said, "?to the best of my knowledge, no war
was ever started by women. But it is women and children who
have always suffered the most in situations of conflict." She
mentioned "the war toys of grown men." Without specifically
targeting her SLORC opponents, but her words dripping with
gentle sarcasm, Suu Kyi went on to say:
"There is an outmoded Burmese proverb still recited by men,
who wish to deny that women too can play a part in bringing
necessary change and progress to their society: 'The dawn
rises only when the rooster crows.' But Burmese people today
are well aware of the scientific reason behind the rising of
dawn and the falling of dusk. And the intelligent rooster
surely realizes that it is because dawn comes that it crows
and not the other way around.

"It crows to welcome the light that has come to relieve the
darkness of night. It is not the prerogative of men alone to
bring light to the world: women with their capacity for
compassion and self-sacrifice, their courage and perseverance,
have done much to dissipate the darkness of intolerance and
hate, suffering and despair."
It was a powerful speech, subtly crafted for the targeted
audience in her homeland.

In 1999, Michael Aris, was dying of prostate cancer in
England, where he lived with their two sons. He had repeatedly
requested permission to visit his wife one last time before he
died, but the SLORC authorities denied him entry, arguing that
there are no proper facilities in the country to tend to a
dying man. They suggested instead that Suu Kyi visit him in
England. She refused, fearing if she ever left the country she
would never be allowed to return.

The day Aris died, on his 53rd birthday on March 27, 1999, Suu
Kyi honoured the occasion at her home in Rangoon, with 1,000
friends and supporters, including high-ranking diplomats from
Europe and the United States. As part of a ceremony, she
offered food and saffron robes to 53 Buddhist monks, one for
each year of her husband's life. The monks recited prayers and
chanted sutras. Instead of wearing her usual bright flowers
and wreathes of jasmine, Suu Kyi chose instead a traditional
black lungi with a white jacket. She cried only when one of
the monks reminded the audience that the essence of Buddhism
is to treat suffering with equanimity.

The police did not stop the supporters from visiting Suu Kyi
in her time of grief. But they took the names and addresses of
all those who attended at the service to honour the husband
from whom she had been separated since she left England to
tend to her dying mother.