AUNG SAN SUU KYI

 AUNG SAN SUU KYI

Aung San Suu Kyi, also called Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, is born June 19, 1945, Rangoon, Burma (now Yangon, Myanmar).

She is is the daughter of the liberation movement leader and national hero of independent Burma Aung San who struggled for  independence from colonial  rule and Khin Kyi and prominent Burmese diplomat.

Aung San Suu Kyi was two years old when her father, was assassinated.

She attended schools in Burma until 1960, when her mother was appointed ambassador to India. After attending high school in India, Suu Kyi studied philosophy, politics and economics at the University of Oxford, receiving a B.A. in 1967. Until 1988, when she returned to Burma to care for her dying mother, she and her husband lived a rather quiet life.

In 1988, when Suu Kyi returned to Burma from abroad, it was amid the slaughter of protesters rallying against U Ne Win and his iron-fisted rule. She soon began speaking out publicly against him, with issues of democracy and human rights at the fore of her agenda. It did not take long for the junta to notice her efforts, and in July 1989, the military government of the newly named Union of Myanmar (since 2011, Republic of the Union of Myanmar) placed Suu Kyi under house arrest in Yangon (Rangoon), cutting off any communication with the outside world. The military offered to free her if she agreed to leave Myanmar, but she refused to do so until the country was returned to civilian government and political prisoners were freed.

In 1990, an election was held, and the party the National League for Democracy (NLD), which Suu Kyi had cofounded in 1988,—won more than 80 percent of the parliamentary seats. However, that outcome was predictably ignored by the military government (in 2010 the military government formally annulled the results of the 1990 election).

Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, she opposed all use of violence and called on the military leaders to hand over power to a civilian government. The aim was to establish a democratic society in which the country's ethnic groups could cooperate in harmony.

The news that Suu Kyi was being given the Nobel Prize set off intense vilification of her by the government, and, since she was still being detained, her son, Alexander Aris, accepted the award in her place.

Suu Kyi was released from house arrest in July 1995, and the next year she attended the NLD party congress, under the continual harassment of the military. Three years later, 1998 she announced the formation of a representative committee that she declared was the country’s legitimate ruling parliament. In response, the junta in September 2000 once again placed her under house arrest. She was released in May 2002. 

In 2003, the NLD clashed in the streets with pro-government demonstrators, and Suu Kyi was yet again arrested and placed under house confinement. Her sentence was then renewed every year, prompting the international community to call for her release in the face of her sentence’s annual renewal, and in 2009 a United Nations body declared her detention illegal under Myanmar’s own law. In 2008 the conditions of her house arrest were somewhat loosened, allowing her to receive some magazines as well as letters from her children, who were both living abroad.

In May 2009, shortly before her most recent sentence was to be completed, Suu Kyi was arrested and charged with having breached the terms of her house arrest after an intruder (a U.S. citizen) entered her house compound and spent two nights there. In August she was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, though the sentence immediately was reduced to 18 months, and she was allowed to serve it while remaining under house arrest. At the time of her conviction, the belief was widespread both within and outside Myanmar that this latest ruling was designed to prevent Suu Kyi from participating in multiparty parliamentary elections (the first since 1990) scheduled for 2010. These fears were realized when a series of new election laws were put in place in March 2010: One law prohibited convicted criminals from participating in elections, and another barred anyone married to a foreign national or having children that owed allegiance to a foreign power from running for office; although Suu Kyi's husband had died in 1999, her children were both British citizens.

In support of Suu Kyi, the NLD refused to reregister under those new laws (as was required) and was disbanded. The government parties faced little opposition in the November 7, 2010, election and easily won an overwhelming majority of legislative seats amid widespread allegations of voter fraud. Suu Kyi was released from house arrest six days after the election and vowed to continue her opposition to military rule. 

In November 2011, the NLD announced that it would re-register as a political party, and in January 2012, Suu Kyi formally registered to run for a seat in parliament. On April 1, 2012, following a grueling and exhausting campaign, the NLD announced that Suu Kyi had won her election, and on May 2, 2012, Suu Kyi took office.

Although some progress was achieved, no changes were made to the constitutional provision banning a candidate from running for the presidency whose spouse or children are foreign nationals. Nonetheless, Suu Kyi and the NLD campaigned vigorously for what turned out to be the country’s first openly contested parliamentary election. As Suu Kyi was not able to stand for the presidency, the NLD selected her close confidant, Htin Kyaw, as the party’s candidate. On March 15, 2016, legislative members elected Htin Kyaw to serve as the country’s new president He was inaugurated on March 30.

In April 2016 the position of state counsellor was created to allow her a greater role in the country's affairs. Suu Kyi has publicly stated her intention to rule "above the president" until changes to the constitution can be addressed.

In her new role, Suu Kyi focused on finding peace with the country’s many ethnic armed organizations, of which 20 or so were engaged in active insurgencies. In contrast with some success experienced on that front, she and her administration faced widespread international condemnation over the treatment of the Muslim Rohingya people of Myanmar’s Rakhine state. After some attacks by Rohingya militants on security installations in 2016 and 2017, the military and police embarked on a brutal campaign against the entire group, allegedly committing human rights abuses and causing a large percentage of the population to flee the country. Given Suu Kyi’s history as a champion of human rights and democracy, sharp criticism was directed at her in particular for initially seeming to ignore the crisis and, when she did address it, not denouncing the actions of the security forces or intervening. In protest of her inaction regarding the plight of the Rohingya, several organizations revoked human rights-related honours and awards previously bestowed upon her.

She was sidelined in February 2021 when the military seized power.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Aung-San-Suu-Kyi

https://www.biography.com/political-figure/aung-san-suu-kyi