by Sheila Fletcher

She is a modest, soft-spoken woman, a mother of two who has worked as a writer and a teacher, and has served at the United Nations. Who is she, and why is she a beloved leader, attracting many followers—and a hated, feared dissident to those who govern her country?

Her name is Aung San Suu Kyi [Ong-San-Suu-Chee], and she has become a symbol of her country’s fight for freedom. Her story has touched many around the world,
and organizations like Amnesty International have taken up her cause.

She was born in Burma (now known as Myanmar) in 1945. Her mother was an ambassador, and her father, General Aung San, was a national hero who negotiated Burma’s independence from Britain in 1947. Months later, he was assassinated. Aung San Suu Kyi went to Oxford University in England, where she met her husband. They had two sons and led a quiet life together until her mother became ill in 1988 and Suu Kyi returned to Burma to look after her.

While she was there, thousands of students staged an uprising against the brutal and inefficient government that had reduced the country to poverty. The government struck back by killing and jailing thousands. Aung San Suu Kyi threw herself into the politics of her country. She travelled around, making speeches in support of the dissidents and their demands for freedom and democracy.

When this woman, the daughter of a national hero, spoke, people listened. “Wherever she went, people came to her like bees coming to a flower,” said Win Htein, a former Burmese Army captain and later her personal assistant. He took nine trips with her to remote areas of Burma.

For a people desperate to escape government tyranny, Aung San Suu Kyi represented freedom, drawing support from all over the country. She helped form the National League for Democracy (NLD). Said Khin Maung Swe, another founding member of the NLD, “We admired General Aung San so much, so it was no problem for us to follow her [Aung San Suu Kyi]. But she herself proved to be a very courageous, very strong-willed person.”

The Regime Responds
In 1990, the government faced pressure to call an election, and the NLD won over 80 percent of the seats in Parliament. The government refused to recognize the win and retained its power.

Even before the election took place, Aung San Suu Kyi's actions and speeches led to her being placed under house arrest, where she remained for six years. When she was released in 1995, many restrictions were placed on her movements. She was unable to go to England to be with her husband, who was dying, because she knew she would not be allowed back into Burma once she left. She was also not allowed visits with her sons.

In 2000, her demonstrations and speeches in favour of democracy, again, led to her arrest. All in all, she spent 15 out of 20 years as a political prisoner, the last seven under house arrest, where the government attempted to isolate her and quell her spirit.

That spirit has become a rallying point for the Burmese people's fight for democracy, with Aung San Suu Kyi as its leader and its symbol. The high personal cost she has paid for her convictions has gained her worldwide support. She has received several awards, including the Nobel Peace Prize, and was made an honorary citizen of Canada.

Why It Matters
Her years in detention made her even more determined to achieve democracy and freedom for Burma. Why is she prepared to sacrifice her personal life to this cause? Imagine living in a country where there is:

• no freedom to express your views or meet with others who believe as you do
• no freedom from torture
• no fair trials in the courts, no rule of law
• no accountability to the people by the President

“Without political freedom, how can there be democracy?” Aung San Suu Kyi asks.

She was released from her seven-year house arrest in November 2010. She had spent her time studying, exercising, working on foreign language skills, playing the piano, and listening for hours each day to the radio, to keep up on events in her country and the world.

	Aung San Suu Kyi gets back to work after her release in 2010.

The Future
Days before Aung San Suu Kyi’s release, Burma held its first election in 20 years in order to appear more democratic. The NLD did not participate because they felt the electoral laws were unjust. Many world leaders later condemned the election as a sham. At the time of Aung San Suu Kyi’s release, people wondered what she would do next. Some members of her party disagreed with the decision to boycott the elections and formed another party. How would she pull the parties together? How would she bring young people into her party? The NLD had developed a reputation for not being open to new ideas, but her speeches made clear she wanted to change that. She believed that every citizen, especially young people, should be allowed to take part in the political process.

She was also well aware that the country’s military rulers could re-arrest her at any time. The military fear her because her charismatic personality attracts so many followers, who celebrate her as their symbol of freedom and democracy.

Aung San Suu Kyi’s father said that every individual must have courage and must make sacrifices—democracy involves responsibility. For Aung San Suu Kyi, that statement is a way of life, one that she feels will eventually triumph: “No matter the regime’s physical power, in the end they can’t stop the people; they can’t stop freedom.”

SOURCES
1. Hammer, Joshua. “A Free Woman.” The New Yorker. January 24, 2011:24-30.
2. Hammer, Joshua. “A Free Woman.” The New Yorker. January 24, 2011:24-30.