Suu Kyi Born: Democracy Icon With a Complicated Legacy

Aung San Suu Kyi spent 15 years under house arrest in Yangon, Myanmar, from 1989 to 2010, for leading the country's democracy movement against one of the most repressive military juntas in modern Asian history. Born on June 19, 1945, in Rangoon, she was the daughter of Aung San, the father of Burmese independence, who was assassinated in 1947 when she was two years old. She was educated at Oxford, married a British academic, and lived abroad for most of her adult life before returning to Burma in 1988 to care for her dying mother. Her arrival coincided with the nationwide pro-democracy uprising against the military government. She quickly became the movement's leader, delivering speeches to enormous crowds and founding the National League for Democracy. The military junta placed her under house arrest in July 1989. The NLD won the 1990 general election in a landslide, but the military refused to recognize the results. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 while still under detention. Her son accepted the award on her behalf in Oslo. Her years of confinement made her one of the most prominent political prisoners in the world and a global symbol of nonviolent resistance to authoritarian rule. She was released in 2010, and the NLD won the 2015 general election, with Suu Kyi serving as State Counsellor, the de facto head of government. Her response to the Rohingya crisis, beginning in 2017, devastated her international reputation. She refused to condemn or acknowledge military atrocities against the Rohingya Muslim minority, which the UN described as genocide. The military overthrew her government in a February 2021 coup and imprisoned her on multiple charges. The gap between her decades of symbolic resistance and her exercise of actual power raised difficult questions about moral authority.