Who is Aung San Suu Kyi?
Aung San Suu Kyi (pronounced ong-saan-soo-CHEE) is the rightful leader of the Southeast Asian nation Burma. In 1990, when Burma had its first free elections in 30 years, her National League for Democracy party won 82 percent of the seats in the national parliament. Suu Kyi has never served a day in government office, though. Burma’s brutal military leadership refused to accept the results of the 1990 election. They’ve kept Suu Kyi in and out of house arrest since 1989. Sadly, the imprisonment of a pro-democracy leader by power-hungry thugs is such a common occurrence around the world that, by itself, it’s hardly notable. But Suu Kyi’s struggle in Burma stands out. First of all, unlike national liberation leaders such as Tibet’s Tenzin Gyatso (you, me, and Richard Gere usually refer to him by his title, the Dalai Lama) and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, Suu Kyi and the NLD were elected first and then denied power. Mandela and his party, the African National Congress, didn’t actually win
