Who is Aung San Suu Kyi?

Aung San Suu Kyi was born June 19, 1945 in Rangoon, Burma. Her father was the founder on independent Burma in 1948, while Suu Kyi's mother played a role in women's political groups. After attending secondary school in India, Aung San Suu Kyi attended both St. Hugh's College and Oxford University where she studied politics, economics, and philosophy and earned a BA. In 1969, she met United Nations’ Secretary General U Thant and joined as the Assistant Secretary Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions. In 1972, she married Michael Aris and the couple had two children. In 1988, Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma to care for her sick mother and while there, she joined the pro-democracy movement, which at the time was pushing for political reforms in Burma. She would address half a million people in Rangoon and called for a democratic government to be formed in order for freedom to preserve in Burma.

Aung San Suu Kyi gained national recognition as the effective leader of the National League for Democracy (NLD). She became the general secretary of the NLD and was a popular speaker in favor of democracy throughout the country. On July 20, 1989, Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest by the military government of the newly named Union of Myanmar. The government was willing to let her go if she left Myanmar, but Suu Kyi refused to leave unless political prisoners were free, and the country was returned to a civilian government. Even though Aung San Suu Kyi couldn't run for office in the May 1990 election, the NLD won 80 percent of the legislative seats. Because of her efforts, she won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest in July 1995, and she would face certain restrictions on traveling upon her release.

After her husband's death in 1999, Aung San Suu Kyi would again be placed under house arrest the following year after her numerous attempts to leave Rangoon in order to hold political meetings. She would be released two years later. In 2003, Aung San Suu Kyi was again placed under house arrest after disagreements with government. In 2009, she was arrested for breaching the terms of her house arrest. She was released in November 2010. In November 2011, Aung San Suu Kyi announced she was rejoining the political system of the military-backed government. In January 2012, she confirmed that she was running for a seat on the country's new Parliament in a by-election scheduled for this April.


If there is one question I would ask Aung San Suu Kyi, it would be:

"What did it mean to you when you won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991?"



http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/a/daw_aung_san_suu_kyi/index.html

http://www.biography.com/people/daw-aung-san-suu-kyi-9192617

http://departments.kings.edu/womens_history/kyi.html

http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/index.php/burma/about-burma/about-burma/a-biography-of-aung-san-suu-kyi

http://www.notablebiographies.com/An-Ba/Aung-San-Suu-Kyi.html

All five sources proved to be very informative as I learned about Aung San Suu Kyi. Most of the sources focused on her life and what she was able to accomplish and experience, especially over the last 20 years. Most of the sources also gave an interesting backdrop of what her parents did, and what type of influence they had while she grew up. The link for the New York Times article also was able to go in more greater detail of what Aung San Suu Kyi is doing now and plans to do in the future.