Aung San Suu Kyi

Profile

Aung San Suu Kyi, born on 19 June 1945 in Rangoon, British Burma, is a Burmese politician, diplomat and author. She served as State Counsellor of Myanmar and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2016 to 2021, and has been described as the country’s de facto leader during those years. She has served as general secretary of the National League for Democracy since its founding in 1988, and was registered as its chairperson while it was a legal party from 2011 to 2023. In 1991, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Her life was shaped early by politics, loss, and movement between cultures. She was the youngest daughter of Aung San, known as the Father of the Nation of modern-day Myanmar, and Khin Kyi. Her father founded the modern Burmese army, negotiated Burma’s independence from the United Kingdom in 1947, and was assassinated that same year. After one of her brothers died as a child, the family moved to a house by Inya Lake, where she met people of varied backgrounds, political views, and religions. She studied in Burma, India, and Britain, graduating from the University of Delhi in 1964 and from St Hugh’s College, Oxford, in 1968. She later worked at the United Nations for three years and married Michael Aris in 1972, with whom she had two children.

Aung San Suu Kyi rose to prominence during the 8888 Uprising of 8 August 1988. That year she helped form the National League for Democracy with several retired army officials who criticised the military junta, and became its General Secretary. In the 1990 general election, the NLD won 81 percent of the seats in Parliament, but the military government refused to hand over power and nullified the result. She had already been detained before the election, and over the years from 1989 to 2010 she spent almost 15 years under house arrest. During that time she became one of the world’s best-known political prisoners, and in 1999 Time magazine named her one of the “Children of Gandhi” and his spiritual heir to nonviolence.

After the NLD boycotted the 2010 general election, the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party won decisively. In 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi entered the Pyithu Hluttaw, or House of Representatives, when her party won 43 of 45 vacant seats in by-elections. In the 2015 general election, the NLD won 86 percent of the seats in the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, enough to ensure that its preferred candidates were elected president and vice president. Barred from the presidency because her late husband and children were foreign citizens, she took the newly created post of State Counsellor, a role similar to prime minister or head of government.

Her time in office brought severe criticism. Several countries, organisations, and figures criticised Myanmar’s inaction over the Rohingya genocide in Rakhine State and its refusal to acknowledge that the Tatmadaw had committed massacres. Her government also drew criticism for prosecutions of journalists. In 2019, she appeared at the International Court of Justice and defended the Myanmar military against allegations of genocide against the Rohingya people. After her party won the November 2020 general election, she was arrested on 1 February 2021 in a coup that returned the Tatmadaw to power. She later received prison sentences on multiple charges, reduced from 33 years to 27 years. The United Nations, most European countries, and the United States condemned the arrests, trials, and sentences as politically motivated. Her words still carry weight because they come from a life bound to Myanmar’s struggle over power, democracy, sacrifice, and accountability.