Aung San Suu Kyi ( born 1945) is a Burmese opposition politician and the General Secretary of the National League for Democracy. In the 1990 general election, Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won 59% of the national votes and 81% (392 of 485) of the seats in Parliament.She had, however, already been detained under house arrest before the elections. She remained under house arrest in Burma for almost 15 of the 21 years from 20 July 1989 until her release on 13 November 2010.
Aung San Suu Kyi received the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by the Government of India and the International Simón Bolívar Prize from the government of Venezuela. In 2007, the Government of Canada made her an honorary citizen of that country,one of only five people ever to receive the honor.Aung San Suu Kyi is the third child and only daughter of Aung San, considered to be the father of modern-day Burma.
Aung San Suu Kyi was born in Rangoon (now named Yangon).Her father, Aung San, founded the modern Burmese army and negotiated Burma's independence from the British Empire 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. Aung San Lin died at age eight, when he drowned in an ornamental lake on the grounds of the house.Her elder brother emigrated to San Diego, California, becoming a United States citizen.After Aung San Lin's death, the family moved to a house by Inya Lake where Suu Kyi met people of very different backgrounds, political views and religions.She was educated in Methodist English High School (now Basic Education High School No. 1 Dagon) for much of her childhood in Burma, where she was noted as having a talent for learning languages.She is a Theravada Buddhist.
In 1988 Suu Kyi returned to Burma, at first to tend for her ailing mother but later to lead the pro-democracy movement. Aris' visit in Christmas 1995 turned out to be the last time that he and Suu Kyi met, as Suu Kyi remained in Burma and the Burmese dictatorship denied him any further entry visas.Aris was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997 which was later found to be terminal. Despite appeals from prominent figures and organizations, including the United States, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Pope John Paul II, the Burmese government would not grant Aris a visa, saying that they did not have the facilities to care for him, and instead urged Aung San Suu Kyi to leave the country to visit him. She was at that time temporarily free from house arrest but was unwilling to depart, fearing that she would be refused re-entry if she left, as she did not trust the military junta's assurance that she could return.
Aris died on his 53rd birthday on 27 March 1999. Since 1989, when his wife was first placed under house arrest, he had seen her only five times, the last of which was for Christmas in 1995. She also remains separated from her children, who live in the United Kingdom.On 2 May 2008, after Cyclone Nargis hit Burma, Suu Kyi lost the roof of her house and lived in virtual darkness after losing electricity in her dilapidated lakeside residence. She used candles at night as she was not provided any generator set. Plans to renovate and repair the house were announced in August 2009.Suu Kyi was released from house arrest on 13 November 2010.
Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988 to take care of her ailing mother. By coincidence, in the same year, the long-time military leader of Burma and head of the ruling party, General Ne Win, stepped down. This led to mass demonstrations for democracy on 8 August 1988 (8–8–88, a day seen as auspicious), which were violently suppressed in what came to be known as the 8888 Uprising. On 26 August 1988, she addressed half a million people at a mass rally in front of the Shwedagon Pagoda in the capital, calling for a democratic government. However in September, a new military junta took power. Later the same month, 24 September 1988, the National League for Democracy (NLD) was formed, with Suu Kyi as general secretary.
On the evening of 13 November 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest.This was the date her detention had been set to expire according to a court ruling in August 2009 and came six days after a widely criticized general election. She appeared in front of a crowd of her supporters, who rushed to her house in Rangoon when nearby barricades were removed by the security forces. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate had been detained for 15 of the past 21 years.The government newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported the release positively, saying she had been granted a pardon after serving her sentence "in good conduct". The New York Times suggested that the military government may have released Suu Kyi because it felt it was in a confident position to control her supporters after the election.The role that Aung San Suu Kyi will play in the future of democracy in Burma remains a subject of much debate.
Her son Kim Aris was granted a visa in November 2010 to see his mother, Aung San Suu Kyi, shortly after her release, for the first time in 10 years. He visited again in July 5, 2011, to accompany her on a trip to Bagan, her first trip outside Yangon since 2003.Her son visited again in August 8, 2011, to accompany her on a trip to Pegu, her second trip.
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