Concept

Aung San Suu Kyi

Overview

Aung San Suu Kyi (born 19 June 1945) is a Burmese politician, diplomat and author who served as State Counsellor of Myanmar and Union Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2016 to 2021. She has served as the general secretary of the National League for Democracy (NLD) since the party's founding in 1988 and was registered as its chairperson while it was a legal party from 2011 to 2023. She played a vital role in Myanmar's transition from military junta to partial democracy in the 2010s. She has been widely described as the de facto leader of Myanmar from 2016 to 2021. She was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.

The youngest daughter of Aung San, Father of the Nation of modern-day Myanmar, and Khin Kyi, Aung San Suu Kyi was born in Rangoon, British Burma. After graduating from the University of Delhi in 1964 and St Hugh's College, Oxford, in 1968, she worked at the United Nations for three years. She married Michael Aris in 1972, with whom she had two children. Aung San Suu Kyi rose to prominence in the 8888 Uprising of 8 August 1988 and became the General Secretary of the NLD, which she had newly formed with the help of several retired army officials who criticised the military junta. In the 1990 general election, NLD won 81% of the seats in Parliament, but the results were nullified, as the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), the military government, refused to hand over power, resulting in an international outcry. She had been detained before the elections and remained under house arrest for almost 15 of the 21 years from 1989 to 2010, becoming one of the world's most prominent political prisoners. In 1999, Time magazine named her one of the "Children of Gandhi" and his spiritual heir to nonviolence. She survived an assassination attempt in the 2003 Depayin massacre when at least 70 people associated with the NLD were killed.

Her party boycotted the 2010 general election, resulting in a decisive victory for the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP). Aung San Suu Kyi became a member of the Pyithu Hluttaw (House of Representatives) while her party won 43 of the 45 vacant seats in the 2012 by-elections. In the 2015 general election, her party won a landslide victory, taking 86% of the seats in the Pyidaungsu Hluttaw, well more than the 67% supermajority needed to ensure that its preferred candidates were elected president and vice president in the Presidential Electoral College. Although she was prohibited from becoming president owing to a clause in the Myanmar Constitution—her late husband and children are foreign citizens—she assumed the newly created role of State Counsellor of Myanmar, a role akin to a prime minister or a head of government.

When she ascended to the office of state counsellor, Aung San Suu Kyi drew criticism from several countries, organisations and figures over Myanmar's inaction in response to the Rohingya genocide in Rakhine State and refusal to acknowledge that the Tatmadaw (armed forces) had committed massacres. Under her leadership, Myanmar also drew criticism for prosecutions of journalists. In 2019, Aung San Suu Kyi appeared in the International Court of Justice where she defended the Myanmar military against allegations of genocide against the Rohingya people.

Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party had won the November 2020 general election, was arrested on 1 February 2021, after a coup d'état that returned the Tatmadaw to power and sparked protests across the country. Several charges were filed against her, and on 6 December 2021, she was sentenced to four years in prison on two of them. On 10 January 2022, she was sentenced to an additional four years on another set of charges. On 12 October 2022, she was convicted of two further charges of corruption and was sentenced to two terms of three years' imprisonment to be served concurrently. On 30 December 2022, her trials ended with another conviction and an additional sentence of seven years' imprisonment for corruption. Aung San Suu Kyi's final sentence was of 33 years in prison, later reduced to 27 years. The United Nations, most European countries, and the United States condemned the arrests, trials, and sentences as politically motivated.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

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He made peace with the revolutionaries and acknowledged the Republic, on condition that he should be the first President instead of Sun Yat Sen. Yuan Shih-k'ai was, of course, supported by the Legations, being what is called a "strong man," _i.e._ a believer in blood and iron, not likely to be led astray by talk about democracy or freedom. In China, the North has always been more military and less liberal than the…
Bertrand Russell, The Problem of China
States what Aung San Suu Kyi is.
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Under the lead of some of the old members, the old parliament, called by its opponents the defunct parliament, has led an intermittent existence ever since. Claiming to be the sole authentic constitutional body of China, it finally elected Dr. Sun president of China and thus prepared the act of the fifth of May, already reported.
John Dewey, China, Japan and the U.S.A.
Close in meaning to Aung San Suu Kyi; the term itself is not named.
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The Protestants have defamed her, as if Lutherans have the monopoly of all the virtues; and the Papists exulted too much in the conversion of a woman who was a mere philosopher. She retired to Rome, where she passed the rest of her life surrounded by the arts which she loved, and for the sake of which she had renounced an empire at the age of twenty-seven. After her abdication she induced the States of Sweden to…
Voltaire, Voltaire's history of Charles XII, king of Sweden
Close in meaning to Aung San Suu Kyi; the term itself is not named.
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Philosophers who discussed Aung San Suu Kyi

John Finnis

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Part of Buddhist philosophy.

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