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| “ | 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 |
Aung San Suu Kyi (Yangon, Burma, June 19, 1945) is a Burmese politician who served as the country’s State Councillor (A role similar to Prime Minister or Chancellor) from 2016 to 2021. She could not assume the Presidency of the government despite the fact that the leading party, National League for Democracy (LND), won the elections held in November 2015, since the Burmese Constitution prohibits occupying the post to those who have children with foreign passports and those of Suu Kyi have British nationality. Finally, the Parliament - in which the NLD has an absolute majority - elected as president of Burma Htin Kyaw, a close friend of Suu Kyi and with four of the most important government ministries, Aung San Suu Kyi would go on to rule in the shade.
In recent years, Suu Kyi's struggle for the democratization of Burma received international support through numerous awards: she received the Rafto Prize; in 1990, the Sakharov Prize for freedom of thought and in 1991, the Nobel Peace Prize. In 1992 she received the Jawaharlal Nehrupara Prize for international understanding, awarded by the Government of India and the Simón Bolívar International Prize, by the Government of Venezuela. In 2012, the Government of Pakistan gave her the Shaheed Benazir Bhutto prize for democracy. In 2007, the Government of Canada made her an honorary citizen of that country, making her the the fourth person to receive this honor. In 2011, she was awarded the Wallenberg medal.4 On September 19, 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi was presented with the Congressional Gold Medal, which is, along with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civil honor in the United States.
However, all these honors are now worthless due to the inaction of the Nobel Peace Prize regarding the "ethnic cleansing" of the Rohingya, a Muslim minority in fact several honorary citizenships have been revoked. The minister's impassivity cost her the Oxford Freedom Prize and the Elie Wiesel Prize, awarded by the prestigious Holocaust Museum in the United States. Three other Nobel Peace Laureates, Yemeni Tawakkol Karman, Norwegian Mairead Maguire and Iranian Shirin Ebadi, have expressed deep criticism of Aung San Suu Kyi after visiting the refugee camps in Bangladesh. She is also good friends with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
In early 2021, Min Aung Hlaing (long accused of being the de facto leader of the country) seized power in a military coup, establishing the State Administration Council. Kyi was arrested along with other political leaders and accused of election fraud. She was later charged with illegally importing ten or more walkie talkies, incitement to sedition, corruption, violating official secrets and offences connected to the natural disaster management law. She was also charged with violating COVID-19 regulations, electoral fraud and treason. On December 6, 2021, Kyi was found guilty of inciting riots and violating Covid-19 restrictions and sentenced to two years in prison. She was later convicted of illegal walkie-talkie possession and sentenced to another four years, and on April 27 2022 was sentenced to five years on false charges of corruption.
Biography edit
Aung San Suu Kyi was two years old when her father, then the de facto prime minister of what would shortly become independent Burma, was assassinated. She attended schools in Burma until 1960, when her mother was appointed ambassador to India.
After further study in India, she attended the University of Oxford, where she met her future husband, the British scholar Michael Aris. She and Aris had two children and lived a rather quiet life until 1988, when she returned to Burma to nurse her dying mother, leaving her husband and sons behind. There the mass slaughter of protesters against the brutal and unresponsive rule of military strongman Ne Win led her to speak out against him and to begin a nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights in that country.
In July 1989, the State Peace and Development Council placed Suu Kyi under house arrest in Yangon (Rangoon) and held her incommunicado. The military offered to free her if she agreed to leave Myanmar, but she refused to do so until the country was returned to civilian government and political prisoners were freed.
The National League for Democracy (NLD), which Suu Kyi had cofounded in 1988, won more than 80 percent of the parliamentary seats that were contested in 1990, but the results of that election were ignored by the military government (in 2010 the military government formally annulled the results of the 1990 election). The news that Suu Kyi was being given the Nobel Prize set off intense vilification of her by the government, and, since she was still being detained, her son, Alexander Aris, accepted the award in her place.
Suu Kyi was freed from house arrest in July 1995, although restrictions were placed on her ability to travel outside Yangon. The following year she attended the NLD party congress, but the military government continued to harass both her and her party. In 1998 she announced the formation of a representative committee that she declared was the country’s legitimate ruling parliament. Michael Aris died in London in early 1999. Prior to his death, the military junta denied him a visa to visit Suu Kyi in Myanmar, and Suu Kyi, anticipating that she would not be allowed to reenter the country if she left, remained in Myanmar.
The junta once again placed Suu Kyi under house arrest from September 2000 to May 2002, ostensibly for having violated restrictions by attempting to travel outside Yangon.
Following clashes between the NLD and pro-government demonstrators in 2003, the government returned her to house arrest. Calls for her release continued throughout the international community in the face of her sentence’s annual renewal, and in 2009 a United Nations body declared her detention illegal under Myanmar’s own law. In 2008 the conditions of her house arrest were somewhat loosened, allowing her to receive some magazines as well as letters from her children, who were both living abroad.
In May 2009, shortly before her most recent sentence was to be completed, Suu Kyi was arrested and charged with having breached the terms of her house arrest after an intruder (a U.S. citizen) entered her house compound and spent two nights there. In August she was convicted and sentenced to three years in prison, though the sentence immediately was reduced to 18 months, and she was allowed to serve it while remaining under house arrest. At the time of her conviction, the belief was widespread both within and outside Myanmar that this latest ruling was designed to prevent Suu Kyi from participating in multiparty parliamentary elections (the first since 1990) scheduled for 2010.
That suspicion became reality through a series of new election laws enacted in March 2010: one prohibited individuals from any participation in elections if they had been convicted of a crime (as she had been in 2009), and another disqualified anyone who was (or had been) married to a foreign national from running for office. In support of Suu Kyi, the NLD refused to reregister under those new laws (as was required) and was disbanded. The government parties faced little opposition in the November 7, 2010, election and easily won an overwhelming majority of legislative seats amid widespread allegations of voter fraud. Suu Kyi was released from house arrest six days after the election and vowed to continue her opposition to military rule.
Government restrictions on Suu Kyi’s activities were further relaxed during 2011. She was allowed to meet freely with associates and others in Yangon and by midyear was able to travel outside the city. In August she met in the capital, Nay Pyi Taw (Naypyidaw), with Thein Sein, who had become the civilian president of Myanmar in March.
Other high-profile meetings followed later in the year, including those with Thailand’s new prime minister, Yingluck Shinawatra, in October and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in December. Meanwhile, rules on political participation were eased, and, in advance of parliamentary by-elections scheduled for April 2012, the NLD was officially reinstated. In January 2012 Suu Kyi announced that she was seeking election to a constituency in Yangon, and her bid to run for office was approved by the government in February. She easily won her seat in the April 1 elections and was sworn into office on May 2.
In late May and early June 2012 Suu Kyi visited Thailand, her first trip outside Myanmar since 1988. Later in June she traveled to Europe, making stopovers in several countries. Highlights of that journey included giving the acceptance speech for her Nobel Prize in Oslo, Norway, and being invited to address the British Parliament in London.
Suu Kyi maintained a high international profile—including a visit to China in mid-2015—as she worked toward greater political liberalization in Myanmar. Although some progress was achieved, no changes were made to the constitutional provision banning a candidate from running for the presidency whose spouse or children are foreign nationals. Nonetheless, Suu Kyi and the NLD campaigned vigorously for what turned out to be the country’s first openly contested parliamentary election. The polling, held in early November 2015, produced a major victory for the NLD, which was able to secure large-enough majorities of seats in both legislative chambers to allow the party to form the next national government.
As Suu Kyi was not able to stand for the presidency, the NLD selected her close confidant, Htin Kyaw, as the party’s candidate, though Suu Kyi clearly indicated her intent to rule the country by proxy. On March 15, 2016, legislative members elected Htin Kyaw to serve as the country’s new president He was inaugurated on March 30.