He was assassinated when she was only two years old, just before Myanmar gained independence from British colonial rule in 1948. Suu Kyi has done little to stop the atrocities. MYANMAR’s Aung San Suu Kyi has been seen for the first time since she was detained in a military coup, after she appeared in court via video link. But she leaned on an inner fortitude. They would be welcomed back from the camps, he said, but would have to prove that they are from Myanmar. The changes will be discussed at China's largest political meeting which has kicked off in Beijing. She attended schools in Burma until 1960, when her mother was appointed ambassador to India. A few initially argued that she was a pragmatic politician, trying to govern a multi-ethnic country with a complex history. The NLD won the 1990 election in a landslide, but the junta ignored the results. In late 2016 and early 2017, attacks by Rohingya insurgents led to wildly disproportionate responses by the Burmese military, culminating in the systematic expulsion of those 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh amid allegations of horrifying violence. The daughter of Aung San would not be martyred. “Than Shwe and Aung San Suu Kyi compete for a chair,” she said. Before the results were even known, people celebrated in the streets. But I emphasized the importance of the ongoing peace process with the ethnic groups and told her that the U.S. was concerned about the plight of the Rohingya. When Kevin Rudd, who was then Australia’s foreign minister, traveled to see her, she told him that she wouldn’t campaign for a seat in Parliament unless the Burmese government provided assurances that her security would be guaranteed, which it subsequently did, in writing. Western politicians and media have heaped criticism on her; many of the organizations that championed her cause are rescinding the awards they once rushed to give her. I met with Thaung Tun, whom Suu Kyi had appointed as both national security adviser and minister for investment and foreign economic relations. Inspired by the non-violent campaigns of US civil rights leader Martin Luther King and India's Mahatma Gandhi, she organised rallies and travelled around the country, calling for peaceful democratic reform and free elections. She was happy that Ambassador Mitchell and I had brought along a DVD she had requested: Glory, the underdog story of an all-black regiment during the United States’ Civil War. She may have been consistent and we just didn't know the full complexity of who she is. Has Suu Kyi turned her back on a free press? The daughter of Aung San would not be martyred. * Due to an editing error, this article originally indicated that Wai Wai Nu is a man. Ms Suu Kyi was later charged with illegally importing communications equipment. The junta responded with force, shutting down the universities and shooting students in the streets. Michael Sullivan reports. … The house was empty; Suu Kyi lives most of the time in Naypyidaw. In June, she met with Viktor Orbán, the autocratic leader of Hungary, publicly allying with him on the challenge of managing Muslim immigration. Suu Kyi, too, is no longer viewed as a democracy icon in the West after her handling of the military crackdown on the Rohingya. "We have to be mindful that we shouldn't endow people with some iconic image beyond which is human. I believed her commitment to human rights was sincere. Read: IN PICS: Tense Scenes From Myanmar Streets One Month After Military Coup ** This article incorrectly identified Aung Zaw as one of Suu Kyi’s student bodyguards in 1988. When her father was killed, Aung San Suu Kyi was 2. He fought alongside the Japanese to rid Burma of British colonialism, then fought alongside the British to rid Burma of Japanese domination, then negotiated Burma’s freedom from the British. But why? After stints of living and working in Japan and Bhutan, she settled in the UK to raise their two children, Alexander and Kim, but Myanmar was never far from her thoughts. She told me about how deeply rooted the pain is, how it could even lead the Chin Christian minority she is a part of to turn on a Muslim minority. The following May, she left Myanmar for the first time in 24 years, in a sign of apparent confidence that its new leaders would allow her to return. “What do these two things have to do with each other—ISIS killing Christians in Syria, and the Rohingya being poor in their village?” Her voice rose in anger. (Neither has she referred to them as “Rohingya” in public, however. Myanmar was in transition. The first time I met Aung San Suu Kyi, she embodied hope. She went on to attend school in India, then studied at Oxford, where she met her husband, Michael Aris. To hear more feature stories, see our full list or get the Audm iPhone app. Released from house arrest in November 2010, Suu Kyi had just been elected to the Myanmar Parliament in a by-election that her party had won in a rout. In 2015, I again traveled to Myanmar as an emissary of President Obama; a general election was just a few months away, and I was there to urge the government to hold a credible vote—and to respect the results. In my encounters with her over the years, I have seen both the idealism she embodies and her will to power. The army of Myanmar has taken control of the country and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi has been placed under detention, in an apparent coup d'état. “We don’t dare to criticise, to say that she’s right or wrong. As one of her advisers told me, Suu Kyi’s mind-set was: “People will judge us for what we do, not what we say.” She launched a peace process modeled on her father’s efforts to unite the ethnic groups—cease-fires that would lead to negotiations and, ultimately, a federal system in which each ethnic group had a formal degree of autonomy while still being part of a national union. In this visual history, Reuters traces the journey of Suu Kyi and her troubled nation. “We will get to those things,” she said. Twenty years ago, democracy was on the march, authoritarian China wasn’t yet flexing its muscles, neighboring India hadn’t turned decisively to Hindu nationalism, a liberal United States was the sole underwriter of the international order, terrorism was a peripheral threat, and the Pandora’s box of social media had not yet been opened. “The image only fades.”, At the time, that seemed unlikely: Suu Kyi’s reputation still put her at the celestial heights occupied by the likes of Václav Havel, Lech Wałęsa, and Nelson Mandela. The still powerful military disputed the results, claiming election fraud. gallery-arrow. The impact of the country’s opening to the West was visible in the new glass buildings filling Yangon’s skyline, and in the heavy traffic from the airport. Unlike Mao Zedong or Jawaharlal Nehru or Suharto, Aung San would never be diminished by power. Ms Suu Kyi was side-lined from Myanmar's first elections in two decades on 7 November 2010 but released from house arrest six days later. All Rights She was going to be the one who did all the reform—and then suddenly she found there was this guy doing it and getting a lot of credit for it.”, A glaring exception to this democratic progress was the government’s handling of the Rohingya. Many people close to Suu Kyi speculate that she is quietly negotiating constitutional changes with Than Shwe. The former student leader Aung Din, who had devoted much of his life since 1988 to bringing democracy and human rights to Myanmar’s people, told me civil-society organizations that had been key supporters of the NLD could no longer count on the support of Suu Kyi’s government. In cavernous government buildings, I sat opposite senior Burmese officials in rooms the size of football fields. We have to help her.”, “Don’t forget us,” Suu Kyi told him. ", Military coup in Myanmar as Suu Kyi detained, The Gambia files genocide case against Myanmar, Rohingya homes destroyed for government facilities, The country where Facebook posts whipped up hate, Suu Kyi 'should have resigned' on Rohingya, Aung San Suu Kyi stripped of Scots honour, China set to overhaul Hong Kong electoral system. As the leader of the opposition in Parliament, she was unhappy that Obama had welcomed Thein Sein, then the president of Myanmar, to the Oval Office. And a large, large population of this country is traumatized from poverty … So all of us have this trauma, and we have not healed. When I pressed him on the Rohingya, he detailed the government’s steps to reduce tensions, permit humanitarian access for groups such as Doctors Without Borders, and allow individuals to apply for citizenship—but the government would issue citizenship cards only to those who stopped calling themselves Rohingya, and few would do that.
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