Aung San Suu Kyi

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Suu Kyi in 2012.
It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it.

Aung san Suu Kyi (born 1945) is a socialist pro-democracy activist and General Secretary of the National League for Democracy in Burma (a.k.a. Myanmar,) and a noted prisoner of conscience and advocate of nonviolent resistance. She was detained from 1989 until her release in November, 2010. According to the results of the 1990 general election, Suu Kyi earned the right to be Prime Minister, as leader of the winning party, but her detention by the military junta has prevented her from assuming that role. She continues to present a major headache for the junta — too powerful to ignore and too well-known to simply be taken out and shot.

In June 2013 she announced that she wanted to be a candidate for the Myanmar Presidency in 2015. As a natural-born citizen of Myanmar, she would seem to be eligible. However, the military rulers have concocted a law disqualifying anyone who has foreign children from the presidency. Suu Kyi's sons, Alexander and Kim Aris, were born in the UK and have UK citizenship.

Suu Kyi's father, Aung San was the head of the Burmese Army that secured Burmese independence from Britain in 1945, however, he was assassinated the very year she was born.[1] After studying in the UK, where she received her Ph.D. in African and Oriental studies, Suu Kyi returned to Burma to lead the National League for Democracy.

She also has a lesson for world leaders, not that they will take heed:

Government leaders are amazing... so often it seems they are the last to know what the people want.

[edit] Awards

  • 1990 - Rafto Prize
  • 1990 - Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought
  • Made an Honorary Citizen of Canada - at the time, one of only five people to have this honor bestowed upon them.
  • 1991 - Nobel Peace Prize
  • 1992 - Jawaharlal Nehru Peace Prize

[edit] Footnotes

  1. Who killed Aung San? by Kin Oung, White Lotus Press (1996).
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