Bertil Lintner reveals the woman who has become Burma's symbol of hope.

She has been likened to Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King and even Mahatma Gandhi, whose philosophy of nonviolence she has espoused.

Some have called her the Joan of Arc of Burma and, to the Burmese public at large, she is a female Bodhisattva, a heroine like the mythical goddess of the earth who will free them from the enslavement of their evil military captors.

Often referred to simply as "the Lady", a cult has grown around Aung San Suu Kyi and, despite her incarceration, she remains a symbol of defiance and moral strength. As such she has attracted sympathy and support not only inside her country, but from across the world.

In May 1990, when the ruling military allowed free and fair elections, her party, the National League for Democracy, captured 392 out of 485 seats in the National Assembly. But it was never convened. Instead the victors of the election were hunted down and many perished in Burma's notorious jails. Today, Burma has more than 2,000 political prisoners, mostly pro-democracy activists and followers of Aung San Suu Kyi.

But who is this 64-year-old saint-like figure who has spent 14 of the past 20 years in prison?

She was virtually unknown until 1988, when she returned to Burma from her home in England to nurse her sick mother. She arrived at a time when the country was in the midst of political upheaval. Student protests had led to the most serious threat to the iron-fisted rule of the strongman at the time, General Ne Win, who had overthrown Burma's democratically-elected government in March 1962.

In her father's footsteps

Until then, Aung San Suu Kyi had not been involved in politics. But the movement needed a leader and she was the daughter of Aung San, the national hero who after World War II negotiated Burma's independence from Britain. Her father didn't live to see his dream materialise – he was assassinated by a rival politician six months before Burma became an independent republic in January 1948. His daughter was two years old.

On 26 August 1988, at her first public speech outside the Shweagon Pagoda in the then capital Rangoon, Aung San Suu Kyi told the cheering half a million strong crowd: "The present crisis is the concern of the entire nation. I could not, as my father's daughter, remain indifferent to all that was going on. This national crisis could, in fact, be called the second struggle for independence".

Most of the people who had come to see her speak had probably done so out of curiosity. But during her speech, she won the hearts of her audience. She emerged as the leading voice for an opposition that demanded the restoration of democracy in the country. "We were all surprised," a participant in the public meeting said much later. "Not only did she look like her father, she spoke like him as well: short, concise and right to the point."

After Aung San was assassinated, his wife Khin Kyi became one of Burma's most outstanding public figures in her own right. In 1960, she was appointed Burma's ambassador to New Delhi, the first Burmese woman to be given an ambassadorial post. Her oldest son, Aung San Lin, tragically drowned in a pond in the family compound in Rangoon while the other, Aung San Oo, went to England to study engineering, and never returned to Asia except on occasional visits. He later settled in San Diego, California.

Their only daughter, 15-year-old Suu Kyi went with her mother to New Delhi. It was during these teenage years in India that she acquired her lasting admiration for the principles of nonviolence embodied in the life and philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi.

She left for Britain in 1964 to further her studies at St. Hugh's college in Oxford, earning a BA in philosophy, politics and economics. Between 1967 and 1971 she held various posts at the UN Secretariat in New York before marrying Michael Aris in 1972.

Her time in the US coincided with the height of the Vietnam war and the upheavals that followed the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. Her main intellectual inspiration during this time came from the civil rights movement. In Martin Luther King's speeches she found similarities with the ideals of Mahatma Gandhi.

Accident of history

Aung San Suu Kyi may have become a leader by accidents of history, but she is not, as some of her critics have claimed, an ordinary "Oxford housewife" who has been pushed into assuming a political role. She spent most of her early life studying Burmese politics and preparing herself to continue the work left unfinished when her father was assassinated.

Her most recent arrest caused a storm of protest and in Australia alone 9,286 people took online action on her behalf within 48 hours of our email and SMS appeal.

The popular support Aung San Suu Kyi enjoys both within Burma and across the world is indisputable. She may remain incarcerated but it is she, not the military, who represents the country's future.

World recognition

The world's most famous political prisoner, Aung San Suu Kyi, was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.

She has received much additional recognition:

  • In 1992, UNESCO awarded her the International Simon Bolivar Prize
  • The following year, the Centre for Human Rights and Constitutional Law in Los Angeles named her the recipient of its Victor Jara International Human Rights Award
  • and in 1994, the Forum of Democratic Leaders made her an honorary adviser to its board
    – all this while she was under house arrest.

At a more grassroots level, in September 2004, artists including U2, Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Natalie Merchant, Sting, Pearl Jam, Peter Gabriel, Damien Rice and Ani DiFranco recorded an album dedicated to her and "the courageous people of Burma." Bono of U2 declared Aung San Suu Kyi "a real hero" and "a modern icon of moral courage."

Bertil Lintner, an international expert on Aung San Suu Kyi, covered Burma for The Far Eastern Economic Review for 20 years and has written five books about the country.

Subscribe free to our quarterly Human Rights Defender magazine to stay up-to-date on current human rights issues.