Aung San Suu Kyi (1945 - present)

Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of Aung San, who is remembered by the Burmese today as the father of the nation and also as the founder of the army (not the army that politically controls present-day Myanmar). Aung San had a selfless attitude toward power, and built up the army for the sole purpose of asserting Burmese nationhood against the British and later the Japanese who both exercised colonial rule over them.

Aung San Suu Kyi was two years old when her father was assassinated, and for many years she enjoyed a privileged life – school and education in India where she studied political science at Delhi University and also where she came to understand and admire the non-violence embodied in the life and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi. Later, her campaign of civil disobedience in Burma was directly inspired by that example – she cited both Gandhi and Martin Luther King as models.

She continued her education at Oxford University, where she studied Modern Greats (Politics, Philosophy and Economics). After being employed at the United Nations Secretariat in New York, she married the British Tibetologist, Michael Aris in England where she later bore two sons, in 1973 and 1977. She performed various researches, wrote a book on her father, and visited Burma occasionally. However, when her mother became very ill, she returned to Burma to take care of her. While in Burma during the months of caring for her mother (1988), she realized that there was much political turmoil in her country with people wanting change, university students demanding it, but the military government summarily and brutally quelling all dissents and dissidents. At this time, Aung San Suu Kyi felt that her country needed her to step forward and give guidance … and from then on she fought for the democratization of her country and the otherthrow of the military junta that asserted arrogance against her Burmese people.

She had told her husband before marrying him that if her country ever needed her, she must give what she had for her home country. And in a BBC interview she later remarked, “I have never been away from my country and my people” even though physically the miles seemed to say otherwise. In 1990 Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest for years, at first her husband and sons were allowed to visit, but later that privilege was denied her. She remained under house arrest for several years until the mid 1990s when she was abruptly released. The book ends in the mid-90s with one of her many releases from house arrest.

The book Freedom from Fear: Aung San Suu Kyi Winner of the Nobel Peace Prize was first published in 1991 by her husband and my copy states that it continued to be published through 1995. Since, the compiling author Aung San Suu Kyi’s husband has died (on his 53rd birthday from prostate cancer) and she has been placed under house arrest again … and again. The country Myanmar, named by the military government to distance the Burmese people from feeling empowered by having a country named after them, still is a military dictatorship. Aung San Suu Kyi still fights for freedom for her people, and the outside world is starting to become more aware … but oh so gradually, because isn’t it true that economics control politics and what would it benefit other countries to assist Burma in gaining their political freedom???

Source

Follow-up information: In 1989 Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest by the Burmese government, renamed the "Union of Myanmar", and for the next 21 years, 15 of those years were spent in house arrest. In November 2010 she was finally, at least most recently, released. Read here for a more complete biography and here for a basic timeline of her stand-off with the Burmese government.