Aung San Suu Kyi : biography
Aung San Suu Kyi MP AC ( , ; born 19 June 1945) is a Burmese opposition politician and chairperson of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Burma. In the 1990 general election, the NLD won 59% of the national votes and 81% (392 of 485) of the seats in Parliament., Pravda Online. 25 September 2007. Equality Now.org. November 2005.. The Times of India. 13 June 2007Walsh, John. (February 2006). . Shinawatra International University. Article: Sentence for Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi sparks outrage and cautious hope Quote: The NLD won a convincing majority in elections in 1990, the last remotely fair vote in Burma. That would have made Suu Kyi the prime minister, but the military leadership immediately nullified the result. Now her party must decide whether to take part in a poll that shows little prospect of being just. Article: How a Missouri Mormon may have thwarted democracy in Myanmar. By Patrick Winn — GlobalPost Quote: "Suu Kyi has mostly lived under house arrest since 1990, when the country’s military junta refused her election to the prime minister’s seat. The Nobel Peace Laureate remains backed by a pro-democracy movement-in-exile, many of them also voted into a Myanmar parliament that never was." Published: 21 May 2009 00:48 ETBANGKOK, Thailand She had, however, already been detained under house arrest before the elections. She remained under house arrest in Burma for almost 15 of the 21 years from 20 July 1989 until her most recent release on 13 November 2010,. BBC News, 13 November 2010. becoming one of the world’s most prominent political prisoners.Aye Aye Win, , Associated Press (via the Washington Post, 10 June 2006.
Suu Kyi received the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by the government of India and the International Simón Bolívar Prize from the government of Venezuela. In 2007, the Government of Canada made her an honorary citizen of that country, the fourth person ever to receive the honour. In 2011, she was awarded the Wallenberg Medal.. Wallenberg.umich.edu. Retrieved 2 April 2012. On 19 September 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi was also presented with the Congressional Gold Medal, which is, along with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the United States.
On 1 April 2012, her party, the National League for Democracy, announced that she was elected to the Pyithu Hluttaw, the lower house of the Burmese parliament, representing the constituency of Kawhmu;Fuller, Thomas, [https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/02/world/asia/myanmar-elections.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all Democracy Advocate Elected to Myanmar’s Parliament, Her Party Says], The New York Times, 1 April 2012. her party also won 43 of the 45 vacant seats in the lower house. The election results were confirmed by the official electoral commission the following day., The Irrawaddy, 4 April 2012.
On 6 June 2013, Suu Kyi announced on the World Economic Forum’s website that she wants to run for the presidency in Myanmar’s 2015 elections.
Political career
1990 general election
In 1990, the military junta called a general election, in which the National League for Democracy (NLD) received 59% of the votes, guaranteeing NLD 80% of the parliament seats. Some claim that Aung San Suu Kyi would have assumed the office of Prime Minister; in fact, however, as she was not permitted, she did not stand as a candidate in the elections (although being a MP is not a strict prerequisite for becoming PM in most parliamentary systems). Instead, the results were nullified and the military refused to hand over power, resulting in an international outcry. Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest at her home on University Avenue () in Rangoon, during which time she was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990, and the Nobel Peace Prize the year after. Her sons Alexander and Kim accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf. Aung San Suu Kyi used the Nobel Peace Prize’s 1.3 million USD prize money to establish a health and education trust for the Burmese people.Miller (2001), p. 21 Around this time, Suu Kyi chose non-violence as an expedient political tactic, stating in 2007, "I do not hold to non-violence for moral reasons, but for political and practical reasons," however, nonviolent action as well as civil resistance in lieu of armed conflict are also political tactics in keeping with the overall philosophy of her Theravada Buddhist religion.
