Historical Figures

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Lady of Yangon

Aung San Suu Kyi (born 1945) is a Burmese politician. An emblematic figure of the opposition to the dictatorship in place, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 2016-2017, her attitude towards the crimes and persecutions committed against the Muslim minority of the Rohingyas in Burma was strongly criticized.

Childhood and studies

Born June 19, 1945, Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of General Aung San who negotiated independence of Burma and his wife Khin Kyi. When she was two years old, just a few months after independence, her father was assassinated.

Involved in politics, her mother was appointed Burma's ambassador to India in 1960. Suu Kyi studied at the Catholic English School in Burma and then joined her mother in India to continue her secondary studies in New Delhi in 1964. She then left to study philosophy, politics and economics at Oxford until 1967; finally, she obtained a doctorate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London. In 1967, she left for New York and became assistant secretary of the Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions of the United Nations.

In 1972, Suu Kyi married Michael Aris, a specialist in the culture of Bhutan, Tibet and the Himalayas. They will have two children:Alexander in 1973 and Kim in 1977. She then lives between the United Kingdom and Bhutan where her husband lives and works.

Detention in Burma

In 1988, Suu Kyi returned to Burma to take care of her mother. That year, protests broke out across the country and were violently repressed by the army until a military junta, the State Council for the Restoration of Law and Order, took control of the country in september. Democrat and pacifist, Suu Kyi got involved in politics and participated in the founding of the National League for Democracy (NLD), of which she became the first secretary general.

On July 20, 1989, Suu Kyi was arrested. The government offers her freedom in exchange for her leaving the country, but she refuses and she is detained before being released on probation. In 1990, the general elections were won by the NLD but the military junta canceled the election results, causing anger and indignation. The following year, Suu Kyi received the Nobel and Peace Prize and used the funds received to work on a health and education system in Burma.

In 1995, Suu Kyi was released from supervised detention. Her family is in the UK but she cannot visit them, otherwise she will not be able to return to Burma. In 1997, her husband Michael was diagnosed with prostate cancer and she would not see him again until his death in 1999. In September 2000, she was imprisoned again for two years.

On May 30, 2003, the dictatorial government paid a paramilitary group to set an ambush in a village in the Sagaing Region. Many of his supporters are killed or injured; Suu Kyi manages to escape but she is arrested shortly afterwards and imprisoned again, transferred to a remand center and then placed under house arrest. In June 2006, she was hospitalized for severe diarrhoea. Placed in a remand prison, she was deprived of care and of any means of communication with the outside world, which provoked demonstrations in front of the Burmese embassies and an appeal from around fifty leaders from all over the world. Suu Kyi finds herself under house arrest again, these assignments being arbitrarily renewed as soon as they expire.

In 2008, when she was 63, her state of health became worrying. Under house arrest for 7 years, she refuses the food brought to her by the military junta. In 2009, she was accused of subversive activity a few days before her release and again arrested and sentenced to eighteen months in prison. In 2010, his party boycotted the legislative elections, the first since those of 1990.

Release

On November 13, 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi was finally released after long years of detention and house arrest.

In 2012, Suu Kyi stood in the partial legislative elections and, on the 1 st April 2012, she easily won her first official mandate as an MP, but her party remained in a very small minority. On July 9, 2012, she sat for the first time as a member of the lower house of parliament. In November 2015, his party won the presidential and legislative elections. In April 2016, Aung San Suu Kyi was appointed Minister of Foreign Affairs, Special State Adviser and Spokesperson for the Presidency.

Persecution of the Rohingyas

In Burma, the Muslim Rohingya minority has been deprived of Burmese nationality – and civic rights – since 1982 and has been subjected to renewed persecution and violence since 2012. “Ethnic cleansing” targeting the Rohingya is considered by Human Rights Watch and the UN as a crime against humanity, while the latter considers the Rohingyas to be the most persecuted people in the world. On the international scene, the silence of Aung San Suu Kyi, her management of the crisis and her denial of the crimes committed have raised strong criticism. Malala Yousafzai, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, notably called out to her in September 2017 to criticize her silence.