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Dear Aung San Suu Kyi, I just wanted to thank you for your courage and reassure you that the world is definitely watching. As a sixteen year old living in a democracy I'm really hoping that by the time I get to the ballot box the Burmese youth will be there too. Thank you. – Claire ** - message from a 16 year old student, Claire**
Take action
Amnesty International is calling on people to stand by her and show the Burmese junta the world is watching.
Take action: support the release of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Myanmar's political prisoners
Aung San Suu Kyi: useful links
Profile by Aung San Suu Kyi expert Bertil Lintner
Aung San Suu Kyi named Amnesty International's 2009 “Ambassador Of Conscience”
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi: Hero File
Profile by US journalist Ron Gluckman
ABC interview with one of her Lawyers
Speeches by Aung San Suu Kyi
“We cannot go on living in a fantasy world”
“Please use your liberty to promote ours”
Background on Aung San Suu Kyi
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is a leader of the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar (Burma). She is the most prominent of over 2,100 political prisoners in her country.
Her name means "a bright collection of strange victories".
She was born as the second world war was drawing to a close, on June 19, 1945 in Yangon (Rangoon), the daughter of Aung San, Myanmar's most respected independence hero and Ma Khin Kyi, a nurse, leading public figure and diplomat. Her father was assassinated in 1947, when she was two years old.
She was inspired by the non-violent approach of Mohandas Gandhi, who she learned about while her mother was ambassador to India. Aung San Suu Kyi moved there with her mother when she was 15.
In 1990, Myanmar held a multi-party general election. The National League for Democracy (NLD), which she headed, won the election in a landslide. The government, known as the SLORC, or State Law and Order Restoration Council, refused to recognize the results and arrested the elected NLD leaders. Aung San Suu Kyi has spent most of years since then in prison and under house arrest.
During her house arrest, she was often in solitary confinement and was prevented from seeing her husband and sons for almost three years.
In March 1999, her husband, Michael Aris, died of cancer in London. The Myanmar government prevented him from visiting his wife in Myanmar but offered Aung San Suu Kyi the chance to leave Myanmar to visit him. Concerned that she would not be allowed to return to Myanmar, she refused the government's offer.
Aung San Suu Kyi won the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her peaceful and non-violent struggle under a repressive military regime, and has also won the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought. In 2009 she was awarded the “Ambassador of Conscience” award by Amnesty International.
Quotes
“Please use your liberty to promote ours.”
"It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it."
“we must always have hope. There is a difference between having hope and dreaming. It is not wrong to have hope but you have to work towards achieving that hope. Just sitting down and dreaming will not do. Have one vision and struggle to achieve it. Our vision is that we will have genuine and a full measure of democracy and the full measure of human rights for which we will struggle on.”
"We will continue with our efforts to bring democracy to Burma under all circumstances. Don’t forget that the ANC was declared an illegal organization years ago. Look how long the effort took in South Africa."
“The quintessential revolution is that of the spirit, born of an intellectual conviction of the need for change in those mental attitudes and values which shape the course of a nation's development. A revolution which aims merely at changing official policies and institutions with a view to an improvement in material conditions has little chance of genuine success”
Desmond Tutu on Aung San Suu Kyi: “...to Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma...That military regime is dead scared of you - and let me tell you somthing: they have already lost... In physical stature, Aung San Suu Kyi is petite and elegant, but in moral stature she is a giant. Big men are scared of her. Armed to the teeth and they still run scared."
Messages of solidarity delivered to Thai embassy in Australia
In September 2009, Amnesty International presented over 2000 personal messages of solidarity for Aung San Suu Kyi to the Deputy Consul-General at the Royal Thai Consulate-General in Sydney. Thailand is currently the Chair of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN).
These messages were collected from around the Australia and online following the decision by the Burmese regime to sentence Aung San Suu Kyi to eighteen more months of house arrest.
One of the messages is from a 16 year old student, Claire:
Dear Aung San Suu Kyi, I just wanted to thank you for your courage and reassure you that the world is definitely watching. As a sixteen year old living in a democracy I'm really hoping that by the time I get to the ballot box the Burmese youth will be there too. Thank you. – Claire
Summary of the human rights situation in Myanmar
View the text of an Amnesty International leaftet "If you live in Myanmar..."
The leaflet outlines how people in Myanmar can be:
- forced into unpaid labour
- forced to leave your home
- denied citizenship
- locked up for years for writing a poem or acting on behalf of political prisoners
- locked up for years without knowing why or ever going to court
- tortured, even to death, by the police or army
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