Biography: Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi, known today as referred to as daw Aung San Suu Kyi was born on June 19, 1945, in Rangoon - now known as Yangon, Myanmar. A politician and opposition leader of Myanmar, Suu Kyi is the daughter of Aung San, a martyred national hero of freed Burma, and Khin Kyi, a distinguished diplomat from Myanmar. She won the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1991 and is renowned in the international community in addition to being revered by the people of Myanmar for her selfless and peaceful struggle against a tyrannical military rule in her country . Her struggle has often been compared to that of Gandhi and Mandela .
Aung San Suu Kyi was 2 years of age when her father, then the actual prime minister of what would shortly become freed Myanmar, was killed in a politically motivated plot . She attended colleges in educational institutes till 1960, the year in which her mother was appointed ambassador to Republic of India. Later, after completing a part of her studies in India, she sought higher education at the University of Oxford. It is here that she met her future husband, Michael Aris, who was a British scholar. She and Aris were blessed with two sons and lived a rather quiet life till 1988, the year in which she came back to Myanmar to attend to her mother who was near death and had to leave behind her children and husband who could not travel with her . Once in Myanmar, the genocide and mass killings of protesters who were speaking against the tyrannical and indifferent reign of military head honcho U Ne Win eventually inspired her to lash out against him and to start a nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights within the country .
The Imprisonment of Suu Kyi
In July 1989 the military government of the recently named Union of Myanmar (since 2011, Republic of the Union of Myanmar) placed Suu Kyi below house arrest in Yangon (Rangoon) and control her incommunicado . The military made an offer to release her if she consented to depart from Myanmar, however she refused agree to this till the country was reverted to civilian government and political prisoners were freed. The recently fashioned party with which she became connected, the National League for Democracy or NLD, won over eighty percent of the parliamentary seats that were contested in 1990, however the results of that election were unheeded by the military government. Further, the military junta officially annulled in 2010 the results of the elections that were held in 1990 . As the news of Suu Kyi winning the Nobel Peace Prize spread across the international community, this initiated intensive maligning of her by the government. As Suu Kyi was still under detention at the time, the award was accepted on behalf of her by Alexander Aris, her son.
Suu Kyi was released from confinement in July 1995, though restrictions were placed on her ability to travel outside Yangon. The subsequent year she attended the NLD party congress, however the military government did not relent to harass both her and her party. In 1998 she declared the formation of a representative committee that she declared was the country’s legitimate governmental parliament . In early 1999, Michael Aris, who was suffering from prostate cancer , passed away in London. However, prior to his death, the junta denied him a visa to be able to meet Suu Kyi in Myanmar and, expecting that she would be denied entry into the country once she left it, Suu Kyi chose to remain in Myanmar .
The military junta once more placed Suu Kyi under confinement from September 2000 to May 2002, seemingly for having broken restrictions by making an attempt to travel outside Yangon . After bloody clashes in 2003 between pro-government protesters and the NLD, the military junta again placed her under house arrest . Calls were raised for her freedom persisted throughout the international community in the face of her sentence’s annual renewal, and in 2009 a UN body declared her detention illegitimate even as per Myanmar’s own law. In 2008 the conditions of her confinement were somewhat relaxed, permitting her to receive some magazines in addition to as letters from her kids, both of whom were each living abroad.
In May 2009, shortly before her latest sentence was to be completed, Suu Kyi was arrested on accusations and charged with having broken the terms of her confinement when a trespasser, John Yettaw, a citizen of the Unites States, entered her house compound and spent 2 nights there . In August she was found guilty and sentenced to three years in jail, although the sentence instantly was reduced to eighteen months, and Suu Kyi was allowed to serve it when remaining under house arrest. At the time of her conviction, the assumption was widespread under confinement as well as outside Myanmar that this latest ruling was designed to forestall Suu Kyi from taking part in multiparty parliamentary elections, the first since 1990, planned for 2010.
That suspicion became reality through a series of recent election laws enacted in March 2010: one prohibited people from any participation in elections if they had, at any time, been guilty of criminal acts, as she had been in 2009, while yet another barred anyone who had once been or currently was married to a non-Myanmar national from running for a government office. In support of Suu Kyi, the NLD refused to re-register as per those new laws, as was required, and was disbanded. The Military Junta parties encountered very little opposition during the November 7, 2010, election and simply won an amazing majority of legislative seats amid widespread allegations of election fraud. Suu Kyi was discharged from confinement six days post the election and vowed to continue her opposition to military rule.
Freedom in Phases
Government restrictions on Suu Kyi’s activities were more relaxed throughout 2010. She was allowed to interact freely with associates and other people in Yangon and by midyear was able to travel outside the town. In August she met within the capital, nay Pyi Taw or Naypyidaw, with Myanmar's civilian president, Thein Sein . Different high-profile conferences followed later that year. These included meetings with Yingluck Shinawatra, the new Prime Minister of Thailand, in October and followed by a December meeting with Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State. Meanwhile, rules on political participation were mitigated, and, ahead of parliamentary by-elections set for April 2012, the NLD was formally reinstated. In January 2012 Suu Kyi declared that she was seeking election to a constituency in Yangon, and her bid to run for government was approved by the junta in February. She clearly won her seat in the April 1 elections and was sworn into office on May 2.
Suu Kyi made her first visit outside Myanmar since 1988, when she traveled to Thailand in late May and early June. Later in June she traveled to Europe, including stopovers in many countries. Highlights of that journey included giving the acceptance speech for her Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, and being invited to speak at the British Parliament in London.
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