Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi is a Burmese politician, diplomat and author who served as State Counsellor of Myanmar and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2016 to 2021. She has served as the general secretary of the National League for Democracy since the party's founding in 1988 and was registered as its chairperson while it was a legal party from 2011 to 2023. She played a vital role in Myanmar's transition from military junta to partial democracy in the 2010s. She has been widely described as the de facto leader of Myanmar from 2016 to 2021. She was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
The youngest daughter of Aung San, Father of the Nation of modern-day Myanmar, and Khin Kyi, Aung San Suu Kyi was born in Rangoon, British Burma. After graduating from the University of Delhi in 1964 and St Hugh's College, Oxford in 1968, she worked at the United Nations for three years. She married Michael Aris in 1972, with whom she had two children. Aung San Suu Kyi rose to prominence in the 8888 Uprising of 8 August 1988 and became the General Secretary of the NLD, which she had newly formed with the help of several retired army officials who criticised the military junta. In the 1990 general election, NLD won 81% of the seats in Parliament, but the results were nullified, as the State Peace and Development Council, the military government, refused to hand over power, resulting in an international outcry. She had been detained before the elections and remained under house arrest for almost 15 of the 21 years from 1989 to 2010, becoming one of the world's most prominent political prisoners. In 1999, Time magazine named her one of the "Children of Gandhi" and his spiritual heir to nonviolence. She survived an assassination attempt in the 2003 Depayin massacre when at least 70 people associated with the NLD were killed.
Her party boycotted the 2010 general election, resulting in a decisive victory for the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. Aung San Suu Kyi became a member of the Pyithu Hluttaw while her party won 43 of the 45 vacant seats in the 2012 by-elections. In the 2015 general election, her party won a landslide victory, taking 86% of the seats in the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, well more than the 67% supermajority needed to ensure that its preferred candidates were elected president and vice president in the Presidential Electoral College. Although she was prohibited from becoming president due to a clause in the Myanmar Constitution—her late husband and children are foreign citizens—she assumed the newly created role of State Counsellor of Myanmar, a role akin to a prime minister or a head of government.
When she ascended to the office of state counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi drew criticism from several countries, organisations and figures over Myanmar's inaction in response to the Rohingya genocide in Rakhine State and refusal to acknowledge that the Tatmadaw had committed massacres. Under her leadership, Myanmar also drew criticism for prosecutions of journalists. In 2019, Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in the International Court of Justice where she defended the Myanmar military against allegations of genocide against the Rohingya people.
Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party had won the November 2020 general election, was arrested on 1 February 2021, after a coup d'état that returned the Tatmadaw to power and sparked protests across the country. Several charges were filed against her, and on 6 December 2021, she was sentenced to four years in prison on two of them. On 10 January 2022, she was sentenced to an additional four years on another set of charges. On 12 October 2022, she was convicted of two further charges of corruption and was sentenced to two terms of three years' imprisonment to be served concurrently. On 30 December 2022, her trials ended with another conviction and an additional sentence of seven years' imprisonment for corruption. Aung San Suu Kyi's final sentence was of 33 years in prison, later reduced to 27 years. The United Nations, most European countries, and the United States condemned the arrests, trials, and sentences as politically motivated.
Name
Aung San Suu Kyi, like other Burmese names, includes no surname, but is only a personal name, in her case derived from three relatives: "Aung San" from her father, "Suu" from her paternal grandmother, and "Kyi" from her mother Khin Kyi.In Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi is often referred to as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Daw, literally meaning "aunt", is not part of her name but an honorific for any older and revered woman, akin to "Madam". She is sometimes addressed as Daw Suu or Amay Suu by her supporters.
Personal life
Aung San Suu Kyi was born on 19 June 1945 in Rangoon, British Burma. According to Peter Popham, she was born in Hmway Saung, a small village outside Rangoon. Her father, Aung San, allied with the Japanese during World War II. 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 is a niece of Thakin Than Tun, who was the husband of Khin Khin Gyi, the elder sister of her mother, Khin Kyi.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 the age of eight when he drowned in an ornamental lake on the grounds of the house. Aung San Oo 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 Aung San Suu Kyi met people of various backgrounds, political views, and religions. She was educated at Methodist English High School for much of her childhood in Burma, where she was noted as having a talent for learning languages. She speaks four languages: Burmese, English, French, and Japanese. She is a Theravada Buddhist.
Aung San Suu Kyi's mother, Khin Kyi, gained prominence as a political figure in the newly formed Burmese government. She was appointed Burmese ambassador to India and Nepal in 1960, and Aung San Suu Kyi followed her there. She studied in the Convent of Jesus and Mary School in New Delhi, and graduated from Lady Shri Ram College, a constituent college of the University of Delhi in New Delhi, with a degree in politics in 1964. Suu Kyi continued her education at St Hugh's College, Oxford, obtaining a B.A. degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1967, graduating with a third-class degree that was promoted per tradition to an MA in 1968. After graduating, she lived in New York City with family friend Ma Than E, who was once a popular Burmese pop singer. She worked at the United Nations for three years, primarily on budget matters, writing daily to her future husband, Michael Aris. On 1 January 1972, Aung San Suu Kyi and Aris, a scholar of Tibetan culture and literature living in Bhutan, were married. The next year, she gave birth to their first son, Alexander Aris, in London; their second son, Kim Aris, was born in 1977. Between 1985 and 1987, Aung San Suu Kyi was working toward a Master of Philosophy degree in Burmese literature as a research student at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She was elected as an Honorary Fellow of St Hugh's in 1990. For two years, she was a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies in Shimla, India. She also worked for the government of the Union of Burma.
In 1988, Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma to tend for her ailing mother. Aris's visit on Christmas 1995 was the last time that he and Aung San Suu Kyi met, as she remained in Burma and the Burmese dictatorship denied him any further entry visas. In 1997, Aris was diagnosed with prostate cancer that was later found to be terminal. Despite appeals from prominent figures and organisations, including the United States, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Pope John Paul II, the Burmese government did not grant Aris a visa, saying 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 unwilling to depart, fearing that she would be refused reentry if she left, not trusting 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 was also separated from her children, who live in the United Kingdom, until 2011.
On 2 May 2008, after Cyclone Nargis hit Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi's dilapidated lakeside bungalow lost its roof and electricity, while the cyclone also left entire villages in the Irrawaddy delta submerged. Plans to renovate and repair the house were announced in August 2009. Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest on 13 November 2010.
Political career
Political beginning
Coincidentally, when Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988, its longtime military leader and head of the ruling party, General Ne Win, stepped down. Mass demonstrations for democracy followed that event on 8 August 1988, which were violently suppressed in what came to be known as the 8888 Uprising. On 24 August 1988, she made her first public appearance at the Yangon General Hospital, addressing protestors from a podium. On 26 August, she addressed half a million people at a mass rally in front of the Shwedagon Pagoda in the capital, calling for a democratic government. But in September 1988, a new military junta took power.Influenced by both Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence and Buddhist concepts, Aung San Suu Kyi entered politics to work for democratisation, helping found the National League for Democracy on 27 September 1988, but was put under house arrest on 20 July 1989. She was offered freedom if she left the country, but she refused. Despite her philosophy of nonviolence, a group of ex-military commanders and senior politicians who joined NLD during the crisis believed she was too confrontational and left NLD. But she retained enormous popularity and support among NLD youths with whom she spent most of her time.
During the crisis, the previous democratically elected Prime Minister of Burma, U Nu, began to form an interim government and invited opposition leaders to join him. Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had signaled his readiness to recognize the interim government. Aung San Suu Kyi categorically rejected U Nu's plan, saying, "the future of the opposition will be decided by masses of the people". Ex-Brigadier General Aung Gyi, another influential politician at the time of the 8888 Uprising and the first chairman in the history of the NLD, followed suit and also rejected the plan. Aung Gyi later accused several NLD members of being communists and resigned from the party.
File:Edgardo Boeninger en Myanmar junto a Aung San Suu Kyi.jpg|thumb|Aung San Suu Kyi meeting with Edgardo Boeninger of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, 1995