Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi (/aʊŋ ˌsɑːn suː ˈtʃiː/ owng SAHN soo CHEE;[3] Burmese: အောင်ဆန်းစုကြည်; MLCTS: aung hcan: cu. krany [ʔàʊɰ̃ sʰáɰ̃ sṵ tɕì]; born 19 June 1945), sometimes abbreviated to Suu Kyi,[4] is a Burmese politician, diplomat, author, and a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as State Counsellor of Myanmar (equivalent to a prime minister) and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2016 to 2021. She has served as the general secretary of the National League for Democracy (NLD) since the party's founding in 1988 and was registered as its chairperson while it was a legal party from 2011 to 2023.[5][6][7] She played a vital role in Myanmar's transition from military junta to partial democracy in the 2010s.
In this Burmese name, the given name is Aung San Suu Kyi. There is no family name.
Aung San Suu Kyi
Office established
Sai Hla Kyaw
Thein Sein
Htin Kyaw
Win Myint
Htin Kyaw
Win Myint
Vacant
Htin Kyaw
Win Myint
Wunna Maung Lwin
Htin Kyaw
Htin Kyaw
Pe Zin Tun
Office established
Office established
Office abolished
Soe Tint
Vacant
46,73 (71.38%)
19 June 1945
Rangoon, British Burma
2, including Alexander Aris
Aung San Oo (brother)
Ba Win (uncle)
Sein Win (cousin)
The youngest daughter of Aung San, Father of the Nation of modern-day Myanmar, and Khin Kyi, Aung San Suu Kyi was born in Rangoon, British Burma. After graduating from the University of Delhi in 1964 and St Hugh's College, Oxford in 1968, she worked at the United Nations for three years. She married Michael Aris in 1972, with whom she had two children.
Aung San Suu Kyi rose to prominence in the 8888 Uprising of 8 August 1988 and became the General Secretary of the NLD, which she had newly formed with the help of several retired army officials who criticized the military junta. In the 1990 elections, NLD won 81% of the seats in Parliament, but the results were nullified, as the military government (the State Peace and Development Council – SPDC) refused to hand over power, resulting in an international outcry. She had been detained before the elections and remained under house arrest for almost 15 of the 21 years from 1989 to 2010, becoming one of the world's most prominent political prisoners.[8] In 1999, Time magazine named her one of the "Children of Gandhi" and his spiritual heir to nonviolence.[9] She survived an assassination attempt in the 2003 Depayin massacre when at least 70 people associated with the NLD were killed.[10]
Her party boycotted the 2010 elections, resulting in a decisive victory for the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). Aung San Suu Kyi became a Pyithu Hluttaw MP while her party won 43 of the 45 vacant seats in the 2012 by-elections. In the 2015 elections, her party won a landslide victory, taking 86% of the seats in the Assembly of the Union—well more than the 67% supermajority needed to ensure that its preferred candidates were elected president and second vice president in the presidential electoral college. Although she was prohibited from becoming the president due to a clause in the constitution—her late husband and children are foreign citizens—she assumed the newly created role of State Counsellor of Myanmar, a role akin to a prime minister or a head of government.
When she ascended to the office of state counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi drew criticism from several countries, organisations and figures over Myanmar's inaction in response to the genocide of the Rohingya people in Rakhine State and refusal to acknowledge that the Myanmar's military has committed massacres.[11][12][13][14] Under her leadership, Myanmar also drew criticism for prosecutions of journalists.[15] In 2019, Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in the International Court of Justice where she defended the Myanmar military against allegations of genocide against the Rohingya.[16]
Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party had won the November 2020 Myanmar general election, was arrested on 1 February 2021 following a coup d'état that returned the Tatmadaw (Myanmar Armed Forces) to power and sparked protests across the country. Several charges were filed against her, and on 6 December 2021, she was sentenced to four years in prison on two of them. Later, on 10 January 2022, she was sentenced to an additional four years on another set of charges.[17] On 12 October 2022, she was convicted of two further charges of corruption and she was sentenced to two terms of three years' imprisonment to be served concurrent to each other.[18] On 30 December 2022, her trials ended with another conviction and an additional sentence of seven years' imprisonment for corruption. Aung San Suu Kyi's final sentence was of 33 years in prison,[19] later reduced to 27 years.[20] The United Nations, most European countries, and the United States condemned the arrests, trials, and sentences as politically motivated.[21]
Name[edit]
Aung San Suu Kyi, like other Burmese names, includes no surname, but is only a personal name, in her case derived from three relatives: "Aung San" from her father, "Suu" from her paternal grandmother, and "Kyi" from her mother Khin Kyi.[22]
In Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi is often referred to as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Daw, literally meaning "aunt", is not part of her name but is an honorific for any older and revered woman, akin to "Madam".[23] She is sometimes addressed as Daw Suu or Amay Suu ("Mother Suu") by her supporters.[24][25][26][27]
Political career[edit]
Political beginning[edit]
Coincidentally, when Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988, the long-time military leader of Burma and head of the ruling party, General Ne Win, stepped down.[48] Mass demonstrations for democracy followed that event on 8 August 1988 (8–8–88, a day seen as auspicious), which were violently suppressed in what came to be known as the 8888 Uprising. On 24 August 1988, she made her first public appearance at the Yangon General Hospital, addressing protestors from a podium.[49] On 26 August, she addressed half a million people at a mass rally in front of the Shwedagon Pagoda in the capital, calling for a democratic government.[33] However, in September 1988, a new military junta took power.[33]
Influenced[50] by both Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence[51][52] and also by the Buddhist concepts,[53] Aung San Suu Kyi entered politics to work for democratization, helped found the National League for Democracy on 27 September 1988,[54] but was put under house arrest on 20 July 1989. She was offered freedom if she left the country, but she refused. Despite her philosophy of non-violence, a group of ex-military commanders and senior politicians who joined NLD during the crisis believed that she was too confrontational and left NLD. However, she retained enormous popularity and support among NLD youths with whom she spent most of her time.[55]
During the crisis, the previous democratically elected Prime Minister of Burma, U Nu, initiated to form an interim government and invited opposition leaders to join him. Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had signaled his readiness to recognize the interim government. However, Aung San Suu Kyi categorically rejected U Nu's plan by saying "the future of the opposition would be decided by masses of the people". Ex-Brigadier General Aung Gyi, another influential politician at the time of the 8888 crisis and the first chairman in the history of the NLD, followed the suit and rejected the plan after Aung San Suu Kyi's refusal.[56] Aung Gyi later accused several NLD members of being communists and resigned from the party.[55]