Myanmar/Burma

DCI

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new ap

Updated April 4, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — Day after day, Chinese rescue teams haul children and elderly people from collapsed buildings as cameras beam the thanks of grateful survivors around the world. Russian medical teams show off field hospitals erected in a flash to tend the wounded.

Notably absent from the aftermath of the 7.7-magnitude earthquake in the poor Southeast Asian nation Myanmar: the uniquely skilled, well-equipped and swift search-and-rescue teams and disaster-response crews from the United States.

In this photo released by Xinhua News Agency, rescuers move a survivor out from a collapsed building in the aftermath of an earthquake in Mandalay, Myanmar, Monday, March 31, 2025. (Cai Yang/Xinhua via AP)

At least 15 Asian and Western government rescue teams have landed crews reaching hundreds of workers in size, alongside initial pledges of financial aid reaching tens of millions of dollars, as the death toll of the March 28 quake tops 3,000, Myanmar’s government says. Cameras showed Vietnam’s team on arrival, marching square-shouldered to the rescue behind their country’s flag.

While Myanmar’s military junta and civil war have posed challenges, the U.S. government has worked with local partners there previously to successfully provide aid for decades, including after deadly storms in 2008 and 2023, aid officials say.

The American government dwarfs other nations’ rescue capacity in experience, capacity and heavy machinery able to pull people alive from rubble. But in Myanmar after the most recent quake, the U.S. has distinguished itself for having no known presence on the ground beyond a three-member assessment team sent days after the quake.

“We all worried what would be the human impact” of President Donald Trump’s dismantling of the six-decade-old U.S. Agency for International Development, said Lia Lindsey, a senior humanitarian policy adviser for Oxfam, which scrambled to provide tents, blankets and other aid to quake survivors.

Now, Lindsey said, “we’re seeing it in real time. We’re seeing it in increased suffering and increased death.”’

A retreat from decades of American policy may be fueling the absence

The United States, the world’s largest economy, long saw its strategic interests and alliances served by its standing as the world’s top humanitarian donor. Myanmar’s quake is as close to a no-show as the nation has had in recent memory at a major, accessible natural disaster.

Current and former senior private and government officials say the Myanmar disaster points to some of the results — for people in need on the ground, and for U.S. standing in the world — of the Trump administration’s retreat from decades of U.S. policy. That approach held that Washington needs both the hard power of a strong military and the soft power of a robust aid and development program to deter enemies, win and keep friends and steer events.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in Europe for a NATO gathering, rejected a suggestion that the administration was ceding influence abroad by canceling thousands of its aid and development contracts, including for disasters. He told reporters that those complaining were the aid groups, which he accused of profiting off past U.S. aid.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio talks to the reporters at NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin, Pool)

“We will do the best we can,” Rubio said Friday. “But we also have other needs we have to balance that against. We’re not walking away.”

He pointed to “a lot of other rich countries in the world. They should all be pitching in and do their part.” deflection SOP

Leading Senate Democrats wrote Rubio this week, urging him to scale up U.S. disaster aid to Myanmar — and fast. Separately, Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, a Democratic member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, spoke of watching a news broadcast of the disaster showing Chinese government teams at work.

“It hurt my heart to see where, instead of a USAID ... team leading the response, there was a team from the PRC that was being celebrated for having saved some people in the rubble,” Coons said.

The 2 1/2-month-old Trump administration, through Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency teams, has frozen USAID funding, terminated thousands of contracts and is firing all but a handful of its staff globally. It accuses the agency of waste and of advancing liberal causes. The Myanmar quake is the first major natural disaster since that work started.

The Trump administration and some Republican lawmakers say they will reassemble a reduced slate of aid and development programs under the State Department, fitting their narrower interpretation of work that serves U.S. strategic and economic interests.

The first announcement of help came days later

Days after the Myanmar quake, the U.S. made its first announcement of help: It was sending a three-member assessment team of non-specialist advisers from a regional USAID office in Bangkok, Thailand. Coincidentally, like hundreds of other USAID staffers around the world, the three had received layoff notices from the Trump administration on March 28 within hours of the quake, current and former USAID officials confirmed.

The administration also promised $2 million in aid, and announced another $7 million Friday. But there’s a much larger number at play.

That $9 million total is dwarfed by the roughly $2 billion in payments for previously rendered services and goods that the Trump administration has owed nonprofit humanitarian groups and other contractors and government and nongovernment foreign partners, aid officials say. The Trump administration abruptly shut down USAID and State foreign assistance payments — including for work already done — on Jan. 20, Inauguration Day.

Combined with abruptly terminated aid contracts and the freeze on the USAID and State aid and development payments, the U.S. back debt is forcing larger aid operations and businesses to scale back their services to people in need and to slash staff. Some smaller organizations were driven out of business. That was even before the Myanmar quake.

Under court order, the administration is slowly making good on those back payments.

In the meantime, nonprofit groups are having to draw on reserve funds they would normally use for sudden unplanned disasters like the Myanmar quake to pay the bills that the U.S. should have paid, said Lindsey, the Oxfam official.

Michael Dunford, World Food Programme Country Director in Myanmar, hands aid boxes to earthquake survivors at Ottara Thiri Hospital in Naypyitaw, Myanmar, Sunday, March 30, 2025. (Diego Fernandez/World Food Programme via AP)

Asked about the burden that the non-government organizations — another name for aid groups — say USAID’s unpaid back bills are placing on their work, the State Department said in an email, “The U.S. government cannot comment on how NGOs manage their financing.”

Typically, the United States itself would have provided $10 million to $20 million in the initial phase of response to a disaster like the Myanmar quake, with more later for long-term aid and rebuilding, said Sarah Charles, who ran disaster response and overall humanitarian affairs at USAID in the Biden administration.

“We have a long history in Burma,” Charles said, adding, “It’s an environment that the U.S. government has been operating in over the last many decades.”

Normally, the United States also would have had 20 to 25 specialized disaster workers on the ground in as few as 24 hours, Charles said. That number would have jumped to 200 or more if USAID had flown in urban rescue teams from California and Virginia. They deploy as self-contained units, with dog handlers and the capacity to feed and provide clean water to the teams, Charles said.

The Trump administration preserved contracts for the California and Virginia rescue teams under pressure from lawmakers. But the contracts for their transport are believed among the thousands of USAID contracts that the administration canceled. That left the U.S. no quick way to move search-and-rescue crews when disaster struck, Charles said.

Britain has pledged $13 million in aid and said it will match up to $5 million in private donations, and China and others have promised financial aid. At least 15 countries sent in dozens or hundreds of rescuers or aid workers, including Russia, China, India and the United Arab Emirates, according to Myanmar officials.

China shares a border and close ties with Myanmar. Chinese rescuers had their first success Sunday, fewer than 48 hours after the quake, when they joined hands with local people to pull an elderly man from a badly damaged hospital in the capital city of Naypyitaw.

By Wednesday, Chinese rescuers had pulled out nine survivors, including a pregnant woman and a child. In Mandalay, Chinese rescuers saved a 52-year-old man who trapped for nearly 125 hours.

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Amnesty report finds Facebook amplified hate ahead of Rohingya massacre in Myanmar

World Sep 29, 2022

With roosters crowing in the background as he speaks from the crowded refugee camp in Bangladesh that’s been his home since 2017, Maung Sawyeddollah, 21, describes what happened when violent hate speech and disinformation targeting the Rohingya minority in Myanmar began to spread on Facebook.

“We were good with most of the people there. But some very narrow minded and very nationalist types escalated hate against Rohingya on Facebook,” he said. “And the people who were good, in close communication with Rohingya. changed their mind against Rohingya and it turned to hate.”

For years, Facebook, now called Meta Platforms Inc., pushed the narrative that it was a neutral platform in Myanmar that was misused by malicious people, and that despite its efforts to remove violent and hateful material, it unfortunately fell short. That narrative echoes its response to the role it has played in other conflicts around the world, whether the 2020 election in the U.S. or hate speech in India.

But a new and comprehensive report by Amnesty International states that Facebook’s preferred narrative is false. The platform, Amnesty says, wasn’t merely a passive site with insufficient content moderation. Instead, Meta’s algorithms “proactively amplified and promoted content” on Facebook, which incited violent hatred against the Rohingya beginning as early as 2012.

Despite years of warnings, Amnesty found, the company not only failed to remove violent hate speech and disinformation against the Rohingya, it actively spread and amplified it until it culminated in the 2017 massacre. The timing coincided with the rising popularity of Facebook in Myanmar, where for many people it served as their only connection to the online world. That effectively made Facebook the internet for a vast number of Myanmar’s population.

More than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh that year. Myanmar security forces were accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of homes owned by Rohingya.

“Meta — through its dangerous algorithms and its relentless pursuit of profit — substantially contributed to the serious human rights violations perpetrated against the Rohingya,” the report says.

A spokesperson for Meta declined to answer questions about the Amnesty report. In a statement, the company said it “stands in solidarity with the international community and supports efforts to hold the Tatmadaw accountable for its crimes against the Rohingya people.”

“Our safety and integrity work in Myanmar remains guided by feedback from local civil society organizations and international institutions, including the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar; the Human Rights Impact Assessment we commissioned in 2018; as well as our ongoing human rights risk management,” Rafael Frankel, director of public policy for emerging markets, Meta Asia-Pacific, said in a statement.

Like Sawyeddollah, who is quoted in the Amnesty report and spoke with the AP on Tuesday, most of the people who fled Myanmar — about 80% of the Rohingya living in Myanmar’s western state of Rakhine at the time — are still staying in refugee camps. And they are asking Meta to pay reparations for its role in the violent repression of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, which the U.S. declared a genocide earlier this year.

Amnesty’s report, out Wednesday, is based on interviews with Rohingya refugees, former Meta staff, academics, activists and others. It also relied on documents disclosed to Congress last year by whistleblower Frances Haugen, a former Facebook data scientist. It notes that digital rights activists say Meta has improved its civil society engagement and some aspects of its content moderation practices in Myanmar in recent years. In January 2021, after a violent coup overthrew the government, it banned the country’s military from its platform.

But critics, including some of Facebook’s own employees, have long maintained such an approach will never truly work. It means Meta is playing whack-a-mole trying to remove harmful material while its algorithms designed to push “engaging” content that’s more likely to get people riled up essentially work against it.

“These algorithms are really dangerous to our human rights. And what happened to the Rohingya and Facebook’s role in that specific conflict risks happening again, in many different contexts across the world,” said Pat de Brún, researcher and adviser on artificial intelligence and human rights at Amnesty.

“The company has shown itself completely unwilling or incapable of resolving the root causes of its human rights impact.”

After the U.N.’s Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar highlighted the “significant” role Facebook played in the atrocities perpetrated against the Rohingya, Meta admitted in 2018 that “we weren’t doing enough to help prevent our platform from being used to foment division and incite offline violence.”

In the following years, the company “touted certain improvements in its community engagement and content moderation practices in Myanmar,” Amnesty said, adding that its report “finds that these measures have proven wholly inadequate.”

In 2020, for instance, three years after the violence in Myanmar killed thousands of Rohingya Muslims and displaced 700,000 more, Facebook investigated how a video by a leading anti-Rohingya hate figure, U Wirathu, was circulating on its site.

The probe revealed that over 70% of the video’s views came from “chaining” — that is, it was suggested to people who played a different video, showing what’s “up next.” Facebook users were not seeking out or searching for the video, but had it fed to them by the platform’s algorithms.

Wirathu had been banned from Facebook since 2018.

“Even a well-resourced approach to content moderation, in isolation, would likely not have sufficed to prevent and mitigate these algorithmic harms. This is because content moderation fails to address the root cause of Meta’s algorithmic amplification of harmful content,” Amnesty’s report says.

The Rohingya refugees are seeking unspecified reparations from the Menlo Park, California-based social media giant for its role in perpetuating genocide. Meta, which is the subject of twin lawsuits in the U.S. and the U.K. seeking $150 billion for Rohingya refugees, has so far refused.

“We believe that the genocide against Rohingya was possible only because of Facebook,” Sawyeddollah said. “They communicated with each other to spread hate, they organized campaigns through Facebook. But Facebook was silent.”

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facebook meta genocide myanmarr india modi

[### Myanmar: Facebook's systems promoted violence against ...

Amnesty International

https://www.amnesty.org › Latest › News › 2022 › 09](https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2022/09/myanmar-facebooks-systems-promoted-violence-against-rohingya-meta-owes-reparations-new-report/)

Sep 29, 2022 — Myanmar: Facebook's systems promoted violence against Rohingya; Meta owes reparations ... Genocide Convention based on Myanmar's treatment ...

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Zuckerberg Goes “Full MAGA” as Meta Ends Fact-Checking in U.S. & Paves Way for More Hate Speech | Democracy Now!

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NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Maria, could you say, specifically, I mean, in a place like the Philippines, there’s — almost 90% of the population in the Philippines is on Facebook. And how is Facebook used, not only in terms of posting information, but also as a means of communication, and the way in which misinformation has spread on Facebook in the past, not only, of course, in Myanmar, which is the example that you cited, but also in the Philippines and elsewhere?

MARIA RESSA: I mean, very specifically, our past president, Rodrigo Duterte, used the design of what was an advertising and marketing platform of Facebook to do information operations. I was getting an average of 90 — nine, zero — hate messages per hour, free speech used to stifle free speech. But beyond that, these networks of information warfare, networks of disinformation literally changed our history in front of our eyes, setting the stage for the election of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the only son of our dictator who was in power for 21 years, Ferdinand Marcos. You’ll remember Imelda Marcos and her shoes. Her son, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., won overwhelmingly in our presidential elections, because, literally, Filipinos were taught in information operations — YouTube, Meta and Facebook — that Marcos was not a dictator, in 1986 ousted in people power; instead, he was the greatest leader the Philippines has ever known.

AMY GOODMAN: In 2021, the Rohingya refugees actually sued Facebook’s parent company Meta over its failure to stop violent hate speech on its platform, which contributed to the bloody military crackdown of the Rohingya Muslim community by the military in 2017 in Burma, also known as Myanmar. Law firms in the U.S. and U.K. launched the legal effort on behalf of the Rohingya around the world, including in Bangladeshi refugee camps. Plaintiffs demanded over $150 billion in damages. The U.N. found as many as 10,000 Rohingya were killed by Burmese forces during the 2017 genocide, though some estimates put the death toll at twice that. Over another 730,000 people were forced to flee the country. I just want to go to a quick video, part of a video, produced by Amnesty, featuring a survivor of the Rohingya genocide.

SAWYEDDOLLAH: My name is Sawyeddollah. I am from Myanmar, but now I am living in Bangladesh, Cox’s Bazar, as a forcibly displaced Myanmar national. [translated] I personally experienced that online hate speech turned into offline hate for us. There were many different things on Facebook against us, which turned the people of Myanmar against us. I saw many different anti-Rohingya posts on Facebook. For example, I still remember a post that said, “The birth rate of these Bengali [Rohingya] people is very high. If it remains continuously like this, we will become their slaves. Now they are our slaves. Let’s go for action.” I knew about the option of reporting hate speech to Facebook. I already reported some hate speech to Facebook, but it only said, “Thank you for reporting. This post doesn’t go against our community standards.”

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to bring Siva Vaidhyanathan into this conversation, author of Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy, a professor at the University of Virginia. And I wanted to go to this issue of hate and how deadly it can be, whether we’re talking about Burma, Myanmar, or whether we’re talking about the United States. I mean, you have, just giving a bunch of examples, roughly seven in 10 lesbian, gay, bisexual adults have encountered any harassment online. Fully 51% have been targeted for more severe forms of online abuse. You have roughly about a third of women under 35 may have been sexually harassed online. You have — a study of 51 countries reveals 38% of women had personally experienced online harassment. Professor Vaidhyanathan, if you can talk about the connection to hate and how that connects to, well, your headline of your Guardian piece, “Mark Zuckerberg has gone full Maga”?

SIVA VAIDHYANATHAN: Right. Well, let’s be clear about this change. And I’m really thrilled that you’ve started this conversation by going beyond the United States. What Mark Zuckerberg announced the other day clearly only applies to the United States in terms of its specificity. In the United States, since 2017, Meta has been trying to at least appear that it’s taking content moderation seriously. And let’s remember, the proper phrase to describe what we’re talking about is “content moderation.” Fact-checking was never part of the formula. It’s not about facts. It’s about protecting users. It’s about protecting people from things like harassment, for protecting groups of people from campaigns and movements, people like citizens of my town, Charlottesville, Virginia, who encountered a flood of violent right-wingers in the summer of 2017 through a movement that was largely organized through Facebook. So, the idea here — and why Zuckerberg has appeared before Congress multiple times swearing that he’s doing a good job — has all been about the United States....

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chevron and total pull out

1/22 kpfa

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A Spectacular Fall from Grace”: Aung San Suu Kyi Denies Burmese Genocide of Rohingya at The Hague

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Myanmar charged with genocide of Rohingya Muslims: 5 essential reads

Catesby Holmes, The Conversation

Dozens of Muslim-majority countries are asking the UN's International Criminal Court to investigate and prosecute a 2017 massacre in Myanmar that killed an estimated 10,000 Rohingya Muslims.

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Aung San Suu Kyi Asks ICJ to Drop Genocide Case Against Burma

Ka Hsaw Wa

Co-founder & Executive Director

Region: Global Leadership and Management

Ka Hsaw Wa is Co-founder and Executive Director of EarthRights International, and a member of the Karen ethnic nationality from Myanmar (Burma). He received his M.A. from the School for International Training (SIT) in Intercultural Leadership and Management. In 1988 after he was captured and tortured, he participated in the 1988 student uprising calling for human rights, democracy and an end to military rule. In the ensuing crackdown by the Burmese regime, he fled the country. Since that time, he has traveled clandestinely to remote areas of Burma to interview witnesses and victims of human rights abuses perpetrated by the junta and exposed these abuses to the international community.

In the course of this investigation, Ka Hsaw Wa realized that his people face another threat—that of transnational corporate investment aimed at exploiting Burma’s resources. He found that the killings, rape, torture, forced labor and relocation of villages were all connected to the exploitation of natural resources in the name of development. In particular, the Yadana pipeline which cuts through the Tennaserim region of Burma has been the cause of widespread brutality and forced labor, compounding the persecution of ethnic minorities populating this area.

In 1995, Ka Hsaw Wa joined two American lawyers to found EarthRights International (ERI), an organization initially conceived in response to the Yadana Project. Subsequently, ERI has applied the earth rights concept to other regions in the world where protection of human rights and the environment is intrinsically connected. As ERI’s co-director, Ka Hsaw Wa has been instrumental in the creation of new strategies for corporate and government accountability as well as innovative training programs aimed at building the capacity of indigenous peoples to protect their rights, restore control over natural resources and conserve the environment.

Ka Hsaw Wa has been honored for his work with the Goldman Environmental Prize in 1999, the Reebok Human Rights Award in 1999, the Conde Nast Environmental Award in 1999, the Sting and Trudie Styler Award for Human Rights and the Environment in 2004, and the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Emergent Leadership in 2009. In speaking tours around the world, Ka Hsaw Wa has made the international community aware of the oppression his people suffer under the military junta and inspired many new activists to take action to defend the people of Burma.

“We will not let them defeat us. We know the companies and their military partners have lots of money, guns, power and influence. But they do not have what we have. We have truth, we have justice, we have courage, and most importantly, we have each other to protect human rights and the environment. We will win.”

Videos

Nightline (Part 1and Part 2)

Speak Truth to Power Feature

https://www.vox.com/world/2018/8/17/17718780/rohingya-us-sanctions-myanmar-security-forces-ethnic-cleansing

2015 rohinga refugees

stuff in FB free, all else pay on data plan

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authoritarian playbook anti-social media; modi, duterte

https://www.democracynow.org/2018/8/1/a_threat_to_global_democracy_how

“Black Elevation.” “Mindful Being.” “Resisters.” “Aztlan Warriors.” Those are the names of some of the accounts removed from Facebook and Instagram Tuesday after Facebook uncovered a plot to covertly influence the midterm elections. The tech giant said 32 fake accounts and Facebook pages were involved in “coordinated inauthentic behavior.”

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This announcement comes just days after the company suffered the biggest loss in stock market history: about $119 billion in a single day. This is just the latest in a string of controversies surrounding Facebook’s unprecedented influence on democracy in the United States and around the world, from its pivotal role in an explosion of hate speech inciting violence against Rohingya Muslims in Burma to its use by leaders such as Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte in suppressing dissent. Facebook has 2.2 billion users worldwide, and that number is growing. We speak with Siva Vaidhyanathan, author of “Antisocial Media: How Facebook Disconnects Us and Undermines Democracy.” He is a professor of media studies and director of the Center for Media and Citizenship at the University of Virginia.

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FARA 2016

Podesta Group, Inc. #5926 1001 G Street, NW Suite 1000 West Washington, DC 20001 54 Republic of the Union of Myanmar (t) Nature of Services: Lobbying The registrant provided strategic counsel to the foreign principal on strengthening the foreign principal's ties to the United States Government and institutions. The registrant assisted the foreign principal with communicating priority issues in the United States - Myanmar bilateral relationship to United States audiences, including the United States Congress, executive branch, media, and policy community. $210,000.00 for the six month period ending June 30, 2016

McCain and the Dictator Money Trail

—By Jonathan Stein | Thu May 15, 2008 12:16 AM EDT

John McCain will fire you for lobbying for Burma, but he'll still take your money.

Republican operatives Doug Davenport and Doug Goodyear were both quietly released from their duties with the McCain campaign this week when it was revealed that their Washington lobbying firm, DCI Group, had been paid $348,000 to represent Burma's repressive military junta in 2002. McCain's critics noted that top McCain aide Charlie Black has lobbied for authoritarian regimes as nasty or worse than Burma's, raising the question of whether McCain will cut ties with tainted figures only when it is politically expedient for him to do so.

There are other facts in the situation that may prove controversial. The two lobbyists for Burma were also donors to McCain. Doug Goodyear, DCI Group's chief executive and the man McCain had selected to run the GOP national convention, and his wife Carla donated $4,600 to McCain's presidential campaign and $2,500 to McCain's Straight Talk America PAC. Carla Goodyear also donated $1,000 to McCain's 2004 Senate reelection bid. Doug Davenport, the head of DCI Group's lobbying arm and a former regional campaign manager for McCain, and his wife Kelley contributed $6,900 to McCain's presidential campaign and $3,500 to his PAC.

Other DCI Group employees have donated $2,000 to McCain. All told, DCI Group employees and their spouses have sent $20,500 to McCain. McCain fired the two DCI Group executives from his campaign, but will he return their contributions? We called McCain's press office to ask and have not yet received a response. Can it be that McCain is willing to separate himself from lobbyists working for Burma but will cling to their cash?

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Aung San Suu KyiAC ( Burmese; born 19 June 1945) is a Burmese opposition politician and chairperson of the National League for Democracy (NLD) in Burma. In the 1990 general election, the NLD won 59% of the national votes and 81% (392 of 485) of the seats in Parliament .[4][5][6][7][8][9][10] She had, however, already been detained under house arrest before the elections. She remained under house arrest in Burma for almost 15 of the 21 years from 20 July 1989 until her most recent release on 13 November 2010,[11] becoming one of the world's most prominent political prisoners.[12]

Suu Kyi received the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 1992 she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by the government of India and the International Simón Bolívar Prize from the government of Venezuela. In 2007, the Government of Canada made her an honorary citizen of that country,[13] the fourth person ever to receive the honour.[14] In 2011, she was awarded the Wallenberg Medal.[15] On 19 September 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi was also presented with the Congressional Gold Medal, which is, along with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in the United States.[16]

On 1 April 2012, her party, the National League for Democracy, announced that she was elected to the Pyithu Hluttaw, the lower house of the Burmese parliament, representing the constituency of Kawhmu;[17] her party also won 43 of the 45 vacant seats in the lower house.[18] The election results were confirmed by the official electoral commission the following day.[19]

On 6 June 2013, Suu Kyi announced on the World Economic Forum’s website that she wants to run for the presidency in Myanmar's 2015 elections.[20] Suu Kyi is prohibited, however, from becoming president within the current constitution; this cannot be amended without the approval of at least one military legislator.[21]

As of 2014, she is listed as the 61st most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.[22]

Contents [hide]

1 Name

2 Personal life

3 Political beginnings

4 Political career

4.1 1990 general election

4.2 1996 attack

4.3 House arrest

4.4 United Nations involvement

4.5 Periods under detention

4.6 2007 anti-government protests

4.7 2009 trespass incident

4.8 2009: International pressure for release and 2010 Burmese general election

4.9 2010 release

4.10 2012 by-elections

5 Rohingya controversy

6 Political belief

7 International support

7.1 Organizations

8 Health problems

9 Biographical Film

10 See also

11 References

11.1 Bibliography

12 Further reading

13 External links

Name[edit]

A family portrait, with Aung San Suu Kyi (in white) as a toddler, taken shortly before her father's assassination in 1947.

Aung San Suu Kyi, like other Burmese names, includes no family name, but is only a personal name, in her case derived from three relatives: "Aung San" from her father, "Suu" from her paternal grandmother, and "Kyi" from her mother Khin Kyi.[23]

The Burmese refer to her as Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Daw, literally meaning "aunt", is not part of her name but is a Burmese honorific for any older and revered woman, akin to "Madame".[24] Burmese address her Daw Suu and Amay Suu ("Mother Suu"),[25][26] (and even "Aunty Suu"), and also the formal Dr. Suu Kyi.[27]

Foreign media refer to her as Ms. Suu Kyi, or Miss Suu Kyi.

Personal life[edit]

Part of a series on the

Democracy movements in Burma

Flag of National League for Democracy.svg

The fighting peacock flag

Background

Post-independence Burma

Internal conflict in Burma

Burmese Way to Socialism

State Peace and Development Council

Mass protests

8888 Uprising · Saffron Revolution

Concessions and reforms

Roadmap to democracy

New constitution

Reforms of 2011

Elections

1990 · 2010 · 2012

Organizations

National League for Democracy · 88 Generation Students Group · Burma Campaign UK · Free Burma Coalition · U.S. Campaign for Burma · Generation Wave · All Burma Students' Democratic Front · Third Force (Burma)

Figures

U Nu · Aung Gyi · Tin Oo · Aung San Suu Kyi · Min Ko Naing · Thein Sein

Related topics

Human rights in Burma · Politics of Burma · Foreign relations of Burma

v t e

A portrait of Khin Kyi and her family in 1948. Aung San Suu Kyi is seated on the floor.

Aung San Suu Kyi was born on 19 June 1945 in Rangoon (now named Yangon).[28] Her father, Aung San, founded the modern Burmese army and negotiated Burma's independence from the British Empire in 1947; he was assassinated by his rivals in the same year. She grew up with her mother, Khin Kyi, and two brothers, Aung San Lin and Aung San Oo, in Rangoon. Aung San Lin died at the age of eight, when he drowned in an ornamental lake on the grounds of the house.[23] Her elder brother emigrated to San Diego, California, becoming a United States citizen.[23] After Aung San Lin's death, the family moved to a house by Inya Lake where Suu Kyi met people of various backgrounds, political views and religions.[29] She was educated in Methodist English High School (now Basic Education High School No. 1 Dagon) for much of her childhood in Burma, where she was noted as having a talent for learning languages.[30] She is a Theravada Buddhist.

Aung San Suu Kyi at the age of 6

Suu Kyi's mother, Khin Kyi, gained prominence as a political figure in the newly formed Burmese government. She was appointed Burmese ambassador to India and Nepal in 1960, and Aung San Suu Kyi followed her there. She studied in the Convent of Jesus and Mary School in New Delhi, and graduated from Lady Shri Ram College in New Delhi with a degree in politics in 1964.[28][31] Suu Kyi continued her education at St Hugh's College, Oxford, obtaining a B.A. degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics in 1969. After graduating, she lived in New York City with a family friend Ma Than E, who was once a popular Burmese pop singer.[32] She worked at the United Nations for three years, primarily on budget matters, writing daily to her future husband, Dr. Michael Aris.[33] On 1 January 1972, Aung San Suu Kyi married Aris, a scholar of Tibetan culture, living abroad in Bhutan.[28][34] The following year she gave birth to their first son, Alexander Aris, in London; their second son, Kim, was born in 1977. Between 1985 and 1987, Suu Kyi was working toward an M.Phil degree in Burmese literature as a research student at SOAS the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London.[35][36] She was elected as an Honorary Fellow of SOAS in 1990.[28] For two years she was a Fellow at the Indian Institute of Advanced Studies (IIAS) in Shimla, India. She also worked for the government of the Union of Burma.

In 1988 Suu Kyi returned to Burma, at first to tend for her ailing mother but later to lead the pro-democracy movement. Aris' visit in Christmas 1995 turned out to be the last time that he and Suu Kyi met, as Suu Kyi remained in Burma and the Burmese dictatorship denied him any further entry visas.[28] Aris was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997 which was later found to be terminal. Despite appeals from prominent figures and organizations, including the United States, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and Pope John Paul II, the Burmese government would not grant Aris a visa, saying that they did not have the facilities to care for him, and instead urged Aung San Suu Kyi to leave the country to visit him. She was at that time temporarily free from house arrest but was unwilling to depart, fearing that she would be refused re-entry if she left, as she did not trust the military junta's assurance that she could return.[37]

Aris died on his 53rd birthday on 27 March 1999. Since 1989, when his wife was first placed under house arrest, he had seen her only five times, the last of which was for Christmas in 1995. She was also separated from her children, who live in the United Kingdom, but starting in 2011, they have visited her in Burma.[38]

On 2 May 2008, after Cyclone Nargis hit Burma, Suu Kyi lost the roof of her house and lived in virtual darkness after losing electricity in her dilapidated lakeside residence. She used candles at night as she was not provided any generator set.[39] Plans to renovate and repair the house were announced in August 2009.[40] Suu Kyi was released from house arrest on 13 November 2010.[41]

Aung San Suu Kyi arrives to give a speech to the supporters during the 2012 by-election campaign at her constituency Kawhmu township, Myanmar on 22 March 2012.

Political beginnings[edit]

Coincidentally, when Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988, the long-time military leader of Burma and head of the ruling party, General Ne Win, stepped down. Mass demonstrations for democracy followed that event on 8 August 1988 (8–8–88, a day seen as auspicious), which were violently suppressed in what came to be known as the 8888 Uprising. On 26 August 1988, she addressed half a million people at a mass rally in front of the Shwedagon Pagoda in the capital, calling for a democratic government.[28] However, in September, a new military junta took power.

Influenced[42] by both Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence[43][44] and more specifically by Buddhist concepts,[45] Aung San Suu Kyi entered politics to work for democratization, helped found the National League for Democracy on 27 September 1988,[46] but was put under house arrest on 20 July 1989. Offered freedom if she left the country, she refused. Despite her philosophy of non-violence, a group of ex-military commanders and senior politicians who joined NLD during the crisis believed that she was too confrontational and left NLD. But she retained enormous popularity and support among NLD youths with whom she spent most of her time.[47]

During her time under house arrest, Suu Kyi devoted herself to Buddhist meditation practices and to studying Buddhist thought. This deeper interest in Buddhism is reflected in her writings as more emphasis is put on love and compassion.[48] There also emerged more discussion on the compatibility of democracy and Buddhism and the ability of gaining freedom from an authoritarian government through Buddhism.[49]

During the crisis, the previous democratically elected Prime Minister of Burma, U Nu initiated to form an interim government and invited opposition leaders to join him. Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi had signaled his readiness to recognize the interim government. However, Aung San Suu Kyi categorically rejected U Nu's plan by saying "the future of the opposition would be decided by masses of the people". Ex-Brigadier General Aung Gyi, another influential politician at the time of the 8888 crisis, followed the suit and rejected the plan after Suu Kyi's refusal.[50] Aung Gyi later accused several NLD members of being communists and resigned from the party.[47]

One of her most famous speeches was Freedom From Fear, which began:

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.

[51]

She also believes fear spurs many world leaders to lose sight of their purpose. "Government leaders are amazing", she once said. "So often it seems they are the last to know what the people want."[52]

Political career[edit]

Suu Kyi meets with Edgardo Boeninger of the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs in 1995.

1990 general election[edit]

In 1990, the military junta called a general election, in which the National League for Democracy (NLD) received 59% of the votes, guaranteeing NLD 80% of the parliament seats. Some claim that Aung San Suu Kyi would have assumed the office of Prime Minister;[53] in fact, however, as she was not permitted, she did not stand as a candidate in the elections (although being a MP is not a strict prerequisite for becoming PM in most parliamentary systems). Instead, the results were nullified and the military refused to hand over power, resulting in an international outcry. Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest at her home on University Avenue (16°49'32?N 96°9'1?E) in Rangoon, during which time she was awarded the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought in 1990, and the Nobel Peace Prize the year after. Her sons Alexander and Kim accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf. Aung San Suu Kyi used the Nobel Peace Prize's 1.3 million USD prize money to establish a health and education trust for the Burmese people.[54] Around this time, Suu Kyi chose non-violence as an expedient political tactic, stating in 2007, "I do not hold to non-violence for moral reasons, but for political and practical reasons,"[55] however, nonviolent action as well as civil resistance in lieu of armed conflict are also political tactics in keeping with the overall philosophy of her Theravada Buddhist religion.

1996 attack[edit]

On 9 November 1996, the motorcade that Aung San Suu Kyi was traveling in with other National League for Democracy leaders Tin Oo and U Kyi Maung, was attacked in Yangon. About 200 men swooped down on the motorcade, wielding metal chains, metal batons, stones and other weapons. The car that Aung San Suu Kyi was in had its rear window smashed, and the car with Tin Oo and U Kyi Maung had its rear window and two backdoor windows shattered. It is believed the offenders were members of the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA) who were allegedly paid 500 kyats (@ USD $0.50) each to participate. The NLD lodged an official complaint with the police, and according to reports the government launched an investigation, but no action was taken. (Amnesty International 120297)[56]

House arrest[edit]

Aung San Suu Kyi has been placed under house arrest for 15 of the past 21 years, on numerous occasions, since she began her political career,[57] during which time she was prevented from meeting her party supporters and international visitors. In an interview, Suu Kyi said that while under house arrest she spent her time reading philosophy, politics and biographies that her husband had sent her.[58] She also passed the time playing the piano, and was occasionally allowed visits from foreign diplomats as well as from her personal physician.[59]

Although under house arrest, Suu Kyi was granted permission to leave Burma under the condition that she never return. Rather than abandon her people, Suu Kyi submitted to house arrest and decided to sacrifice a life with her husband and her two young sons, in order to stand by her people: "As a mother, the greater sacrifice was giving up my sons, but I was always aware of the fact that others had given up more than me. I never forget that my colleagues who are in prison suffer not only physically, but mentally for their families who have no security outside- in the larger prison of Burma under authoritarian rule." [60] Her loyalty to the people of Burma and her solidarity with those imprisoned for their pro-democratic acts have earned her deep respect among the Burmese people.[by whom?]

The media were also prevented from visiting Suu Kyi, as occurred in 1998 when journalist Maurizio Giuliano, after photographing her, was stopped by customs officials who then confiscated all his films, tapes and some notes.[61] In contrast, Suu Kyi did have visits from government representatives, such as during her autumn 1994 house arrest when she met the leader of Burma, General Than Shwe and General Khin Nyunt on 20 September in the first meeting since she had been placed in detention.[28] On several occasions during Suu Kyi's house arrest, she had periods of poor health and as a result was hospitalized.[62]

The Burmese government detained and kept Suu Kyi imprisoned because it viewed her as someone "likely to undermine the community peace and stability" of the country, and used both Article 10(a) and 10(b) of the 1975 State Protection Act (granting the government the power to imprison people for up to five years without a trial),[63] and Section 22 of the "Law to Safeguard the State Against the Dangers of Those Desiring to Cause Subversive Acts" as legal tools against her.[64] She continuously appealed her detention,[65] and many nations and figures continued to call for her release and that of 2,100 other political prisoners in the country.[66][67] On 12 November 2010, days after the junta-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) won elections conducted after a gap of 20 years, the junta finally agreed to sign orders allowing Suu Kyi's release,[68] and Suu Kyi's house arrest term came to an end on 13 November 2010.

United Nations involvement [DCI 2002]

The United Nations (UN) has attempted to facilitate dialogue between the junta and Suu Kyi.[28] On 6 May 2002, following secret confidence-building negotiations led by the UN, the government released her; a government spokesman said that she was free to move "because we are confident that we can trust each other". Aung San Suu Kyi proclaimed "a new dawn for the country". However, on 30 May 2003 in an incident similar to the 1996 attack on her, a government-sponsored mob attacked her caravan in the northern village of Depayin, murdering and wounding many of her supporters.[69] Aung San Suu Kyi fled the scene with the help of her driver, Ko Kyaw Soe Lin, but was arrested upon reaching Ye-U. The government imprisoned her at Insein Prison in Rangoon. After she underwent a hysterectomy in September 2003,[70] the government again placed her under house arrest in Rangoon.

The results from the UN facilitation have been mixed; Razali Ismail, UN special envoy to Burma, met with Aung San Suu Kyi. Ismail resigned from his post the following year, partly because he was denied re-entry to Burma on several occasions.[71] Several years later in 2006, Ibrahim Gambari, UN Undersecretary-General (USG) of Department of Political Affairs, met with Aung San Suu Kyi, the first visit by a foreign official since 2004.[72] He also met with Suu Kyi later the same year.[73] On 2 October 2007 Gambari returned to talk to her again after seeing Than Shwe and other members of the senior leadership in Naypyidaw.[74] State television broadcast Suu Kyi with Gambari, stating that they had met twice. This was Suu Kyi's first appearance in state media in the four years since her current detention began.[75]

The United Nations Working Group for Arbitrary Detention published an Opinion that Aung San Suu Kyi's deprivation of liberty was arbitrary and in contravention of Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, and requested that the authorities in Burma set her free, but the authorities ignored the request at that time.[76] The U.N. report said that according to the Burmese Government’s reply, "Daw Aung San Suu Kyi has not been arrested, but has only been taken into protective custody, for her own safety", and while "it could have instituted legal action against her under the country’s domestic legislation ... it has preferred to adopt a magnanimous attitude, and is providing her with protection in her own interests."[76]

Such claims were rejected by Brig-General Khin Yi, Chief of Myanmar Police Force (MPF). On 18 January 2007, the state-run paper New Light of Myanmar accused Suu Kyi of tax evasion for spending her Nobel Prize money outside of the country. The accusation followed the defeat of a US-sponsored United Nations Security Council resolution condemning Burma as a threat to international security; the resolution was defeated because of strong opposition from China, which has strong ties with the military junta (China later voted against the resolution, along with Russia and South Africa).[77]

In November 2007, it was reported that Suu Kyi would meet her political allies National League for Democracy along with a government minister. The ruling junta made the official announcement on state TV and radio just hours after UN special envoy Ibrahim Gambari ended his second visit to Burma. The NLD confirmed that it had received the invitation to hold talks with Suu Kyi.[78] However, the process delivered few concrete results.

On 3 July 2009, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon went to Burma to pressure the junta into releasing Suu Kyi and to institute democratic reform. However, on departing from Burma, Ban Ki-moon said he was "disappointed" with the visit after junta leader Than Shwe refused permission for him to visit Suu Kyi, citing her ongoing trial. Ban said he was "deeply disappointed that they have missed a very important opportunity."[79]

Periods under detention[edit]

20 July 1989: Placed under house arrest in Rangoon under martial law that allows for detention without charge or trial for three years.[28]

10 July 1995: Released from house arrest.[23]

23 September 2000: Placed under house arrest.[57]

6 May 2002: Released after 19 months.[57]

30 May 2003: Arrested following the Depayin massacre, she was held in secret detention for more than three months before being returned to house arrest.[80]

25 May 2007: House arrest extended by one year despite a direct appeal from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan to General Than Shwe.[81]

24 October 2007: Reached 12 years under house arrest, solidarity protests held at 12 cities around the world.[82]

27 May 2008: House arrest extended for another year, which is illegal under both international law and Burma's own law.[83]

11 August 2009: House arrest extended for 18 more months because of "violation" arising from the May 2009 trespass incident.

13 November 2010: Released from house arrest.[84]

2007 anti-government protests[edit]

Main article: 2007 Burmese anti-government protests

Protests led by Buddhist monks began on 19 August 2007 following steep fuel price increases, and continued each day, despite the threat of a crackdown by the military.[85]

On 22 September 2007, although still under house arrest, Suu Kyi made a brief public appearance at the gate of her residence in Yangon to accept the blessings of Buddhist monks who were marching in support of human rights.[86] It was reported that she had been moved the following day to Insein Prison (where she had been detained in 2003),[87][88][89][90] but meetings with UN envoy Ibrahim Gambari near her Rangoon home on 30 September and 2 October established that she remained under house arrest.[91][92]

2009 trespass incident[edit]

Main article: Suu Kyi trespasser incidents

U.S. Senator Jim Webb visiting Suu Kyi in 2009. Webb negotiated the release of John Yettaw, the man who trespassed in Suu Kyi's home, resulting in her arrest and conviction with three years' hard labour.

On 3 May 2009, an American man, identified as John Yettaw, swam across Inya Lake to her house uninvited and was arrested when he made his return trip three days later.[93] He had attempted to make a similar trip two years earlier, but for unknown reasons was turned away.[94] He later claimed at trial that he was motivated by a divine vision requiring him to notify her of an impending terrorist assassination attempt.[95] On 13 May, Suu Kyi was arrested for violating the terms of her house arrest because the swimmer, who pleaded exhaustion, was allowed to stay in her house for two days before he attempted the swim back. Suu Kyi was later taken to Insein Prison, where she could have faced up to five years confinement for the intrusion.[96] The trial of Suu Kyi and her two maids began on 18 May and a small number of protesters gathered outside.[97][98] Diplomats and journalists were barred from attending the trial; however, on one occasion, several diplomats from Russia, Thailand and Singapore and journalists were allowed to meet Suu Kyi.[99] The prosecution had originally planned to call 22 witnesses.[100] It also accused John Yettaw of embarrassing the country.[101] During the ongoing defence case, Suu Kyi said she was innocent. The defence was allowed to call only one witness (out of four), while the prosecution was permitted to call 14 witnesses. The court rejected two character witnesses, NLD members Tin Oo and Win Tin, and permitted the defence to call only a legal expert.[102] According to one unconfirmed report, the junta was planning to, once again, place her in detention, this time in a military base outside the city.[103] In a separate trial, Yettaw said he swam to Suu Kyi's house to warn her that her life was "in danger".[104] The national police chief later confirmed that Yettaw was the "main culprit" in the case filed against Suu Kyi.[105] According to aides, Suu Kyi spent her 64th birthday in jail sharing biryani rice and chocolate cake with her guards.[106]

Her arrest and subsequent trial received worldwide condemnation by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations Security Council,[107] Western governments,[108] South Africa,[109] Japan[110] and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, of which Burma is a member.[111] The Burmese government strongly condemned the statement, as it created an "unsound tradition"[112] and criticised Thailand for meddling in its internal affairs.[113] The Burmese Foreign Minister Nyan Win was quoted in the state-run newspaper New Light of Myanmar as saying that the incident "was trumped up to intensify international pressure on Burma by internal and external anti-government elements who do not wish to see the positive changes in those countries' policies toward Burma".[101] Ban responded to an international campaign[114] by flying to Burma to negotiate, but Than Shwe rejected all of his requests.[115]

On 11 August 2009 the trial concluded with Suu Kyi being sentenced to imprisonment for three years with hard labour. This sentence was commuted by the military rulers to further house arrest of 18 months.[116] On 14 August, U.S. Senator Jim Webb visited Burma, visiting with junta leader Gen. Than Shwe and later with Suu Kyi. During the visit, Webb negotiated Yettaw's release and deportation from Burma.[117] Following the verdict of the trial, lawyers of Suu Kyi said they would appeal against the 18-month sentence.[118] On 18 August, United States President Barack Obama asked the country's military leadership to set free all political prisoners, including Aung San Suu Kyi.[119] In her appeal, Aung San Suu Kyi had argued that the conviction was unwarranted. However, her appeal against the August sentence was rejected by a Burmese court on 2 October 2009. Although the court accepted the argument that the 1974 constitution, under which she had been charged, was null and void, it also said the provisions of the 1975 security law, under which she has been kept under house arrest, remained in force. The verdict effectively meant that she would be unable to participate in the elections scheduled to take place in 2010 – the first in Burma in two decades. Her lawyer stated that her legal team would pursue a new appeal within 60 days.[120]

2009: International pressure for release and 2010 Burmese general election[edit]

It was announced prior to the Burmese general election that Aung San Suu Kyi may be released "so she can organize her party,"[121] However, Suu Kyi was not allowed to run.[122] On 1 October 2010 the government announced that she would be released on 13 November 2010.[123]

U.S. President Barack Obama personally advocated the release of all political prisoners, especially Aung San Suu Kyi, during the US-ASEAN Summit of 2009.[124]

The U. S. Government hoped that successful general elections would be an optimistic indicator of the Burmese government's sincerity towards eventual democracy.[125] The Hatoyama government which spent 2.82 billion yen in 2008, has promised more Japanese foreign aid to encourage Burma to release Aung San Suu Kyi in time for the elections; and to continue moving towards democracy and the rule of law.[125][126]

In a personal letter to Suu Kyi, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown cautioned the Burmese government of the potential consequences of rigging elections as "condemning Burma to more years of diplomatic isolation and economic stagnation".[127]

Suu Kyi has met with many heads of state, and opened a dialog with the Minister of Labor Aung Kyi (not to be confused with Aung San Suu Kyi).[128] She was allowed to meet with senior members of her NLD party at the State House,[129] however these meetings took place under close supervision.

2010 release[edit]

Aung San Suu Kyi addresses crowds at the NLD headquarters shortly after her release.

Aung San Suu Kyi meets with US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton in Yangon (1 December 2011)

On the evening of 13 November 2010, Suu Kyi was released from house arrest.[130] This was the date her detention had been set to expire according to a court ruling in August 2009[131] and came six days after a widely criticised general election. She appeared in front of a crowd of her supporters, who rushed to her house in Rangoon when nearby barricades were removed by the security forces. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate had been detained for 15 of the past 21 years.[132] The government newspaper New Light of Myanmar reported the release positively,[133] saying she had been granted a pardon after serving her sentence "in good conduct".[134] The New York Times suggested that the military government may have released Suu Kyi because it felt it was in a confident position to control her supporters after the election.[133] The role that Suu Kyi will play in the future of democracy in Burma remains a subject of much debate.

Her son Kim Aris was granted a visa in November 2010 to see his mother shortly after her release, for the first time in 10 years.[135] He visited again in 5 July 2011, to accompany her on a trip to Bagan, her first trip outside Yangon since 2003.[136] Her son visited again in 8 August 2011, to accompany her on a trip to Pegu, her second trip.[137]

Discussions were held between Suu Kyi and the Burmese government during 2011, which led to a number of official gestures to meet her demands. In October, around a tenth of Burma's political prisoners were freed in an amnesty and trade unions were legalised.[138][139]

In November 2011, following a meeting of its leaders, the NLD announced its intention to re-register as a political party in order to contend 48 by-elections necessitated by the promotion of parliamentarians to ministerial rank.[140] Following the decision, Suu Kyi held a telephone conference with U.S. President Barack Obama, in which it was agreed that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would make a visit to Burma, a move received with caution by Burma's ally China.[141] On 1 December 2011, Suu Kyi met with Hillary Clinton at the residence of the top-ranking US diplomat in Yangon.[142]

On 21 December 2011, Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra met Suu Kyi in Yangoon, becoming Suu Kyi's "first-ever meeting with the leader of a foreign country".[143]

On 5 January 2012, British Foreign Minister William Hague met Aung San Suu Kyi and his Burmese counterpart. This represented a significant visit for Suu Kyi and Burma. Suu Kyi studied in the UK and maintains many ties there, whilst Britain is Burma's largest bilateral donor. During Aung San Suu Kyi's visit to Europe, she visited the Swiss parliament, collected her 1991 Nobel Prize in Oslo and her honorary degree from Oxford University.[144]

2012 by-elections[edit]

In December 2011, there was speculation that Suu Kyi would run in the 2012 national by-elections to fill vacant seats.[145] On 18 January 2012, Suu Kyi formally registered to contest a Pyithu Hluttaw (lower house) seat in the Kawhmu Township constituency in special parliamentary elections to be held on 1 April 2012.[146][147] The seat was previously held by Soe Tint, who vacated it after being appointed Construction Deputy Minister, in the 2010 election.[148] She ran against Union Solidarity and Development Party candidate Soe Min, a retired army physician and native of Twante Township.[149]

Aung San Suu Kyi (Center) gives a speech to the supporters during the 2012 by-election campaign at her constituency Kawhmu township, Myanmar on 22 March 2012.

On 3 March 2012, at a large campaign rally in Mandalay, Suu Kyi unexpectedly left after 15 minutes, because of exhaustion and airsickness.[150]

In an official campaign speech broadcast on Burmese state television's MRTV on 14 March 2012, Suu Kyi publicly campaigned for reform of the 2008 Constitution, removal of restrictive laws, more adequate protections for people's democratic rights, and establishment of an independent judiciary.[151] The speech was leaked online a day before it was broadcast.[152] A paragraph in the speech, focusing on the Tatmadaw's repression by means of law, was censored by authorities.[153]

Suu Kyi has also called for international media to monitor the upcoming by-elections, while publicly pointing out irregularities in official voter lists, which include deceased individuals and exclude other eligible voters in the contested constituencies.[154][155] On 21 March 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi was quoted as saying "Fraud and rule violations are continuing and we can even say they are increasing."[156]

When asked whether she would assume a ministerial post if given the opportunity, she said the following:[157]

I can tell you one thing – that under the present constitution, if you become a member of the government you have to vacate your seat in the national assembly. And I am not working so hard to get into parliament simply to vacate my seat.

On 26 March 2012, Suu Kyi suspended her nationwide campaign tour early, after a campaign rally in Myeik (Mergui), a coastal town in the south, citing health problems due to exhaustion and hot weather.[158]

On 1 April 2012, the NLD announced that Suu Kyi had won the vote for a seat in Parliament.[159] A news broadcast on state-run MRTV, reading the announcements of the Union Election Commission, confirmed her victory, as well as her party's victory in 43 of the 45 contested seats, officially making Suu Kyi the Leader of the Opposition in the lower house.[160]

Although she and other MP-elects were expected to take office on 23 April when the Hluttaws resume session, National League for Democracy MP-elects, including Suu Kyi, said they might not take their oaths because of its wording; in its present form, parliamentarians must vow to "safeguard" the constitution.[161][162] In an address on Radio Free Asia, she said "We don't mean we will not attend the parliament, we mean we will attend only after taking the oath... Changing that wording in the oath is also in conformity with the Constitution. I don't expect there will be any difficulty in doing it."[163]

On 2 May 2012, National League for Democracy MP-elects, including Aung San Suu Kyi, took their oaths and took office, though the wording of the oath was not changed.[164] According to the Los Angeles Times, "Suu Kyi and her colleagues decided they could do more by joining as lawmakers than maintaining their boycott on principle."[164] On 9 July 2012, she attended the Parliament for the first time as a lawmaker.[165]

On 6 July 2012, Suu Kyi announced on the World Economic Forum’s website that she wants to run for the presidency in Myanmar's 2015 elections.[20] The current Constitution, which came into effect in 2008, bars her from the presidency because she is the widow and mother of foreigners. These measures seem to have been written in part to prevent her from being eligible.[166]

Rohingya controversy[edit]

Some activists criticised Aung San Suu Kyi for her silence on the 2012 Rakhine State riots[167] (later repeated during the 2015 Rohingya refugee crisis).[168][169] After receiving a peace prize, she told reporters she did not know if the Rohingya could be regarded as Burmese citizens.[170] Under the 1982 Citizenship Law, most Rohingya are unable to qualify for Burmese citizenship. As such, they are treated as illegal immigrants, with restrictions on their movement and withholding of land rights, education and public service.[167] Some describe her stance as politically motivated;[167] however, she said that she wanted to work towards reconciliation and that she cannot take sides as "violence has been committed by both sides."[171] According to The Economist, her "halo has even slipped among foreign human-rights lobbyists, disappointed at her failure to make a clear stand on behalf of the Rohingya minority." However, she has spoken out "against a ban on Rohingya families near the Bangladeshi border having more than two children."[172]

In a 2015 BBC News article, reporter Jonah Fisher suggested that Aung San Suu Kyi's silence over the Rohingya issue is due to a need to obtain support from the majority Bamar ethnicity as she is in "the middle of a general election campaign".[173] Adding to the international criticism of Aung San Suu Kyi's silence, in May 2015, the 14th Dalai Lama called on her to do more to help the Rohingya in Myanmar.[174]

Political belief[edit]

Aung San Suu Kyi and President of Mongolia Tsakhiagiin Elbegdorj in Ulaanbaatar

Asked what democratic models Myanmar could look to, she said: "We have many, many lessons to learn from various places, not just the Asian countries like South Korea, Taiwan, Mongolia and Indonesia." She also cited "the eastern European countries, which made the transition from communist autocracy to democracy in the 1980s and 1990s, and the Latin American countries, which made the transition from military governments. "And we cannot of course forget South Africa, because although it wasn't a military regime, it was certainly an authoritarian regime." She added: "We wish to learn from everybody who has achieved a transition to democracy, and also ... our great strong point is that, because we are so far behind everybody else, we can also learn which mistakes we should avoid."[175]

In a nod to the deep US political divide between Republicans led by Mitt Romney and the Democrats of Obama—battling to win the 2012 Presidential election—she stressed with a smile "Those of you who are familiar with American politics I'm sure understand the need for negotiated compromise."[175]

International support[edit]

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at a conference in London, during 5 countries tour of Europe, 2012

May 2009 demonstration for Aung San Suu Kyi in Rome, Italy

The 2009 celebration of Aung San Suu Kyi's birthday in Dublin, Ireland

Aung San Suu Kyi greeting supporters from Bago State in 2011

Aung San Suu Kyi has received vocal support from Western nations in Europe,[176] Australia[176] and North[177] and South America, as well as India,[6] Israel,[178] Japan[179] the Philippines and South Korea.[180] In December 2007, the US House of Representatives voted unanimously 400–0 to award Aung San Suu Kyi the Congressional Gold Medal; the Senate concurred on 25 April 2008.[181] On 6 May 2008, President George Bush signed legislation awarding Suu Kyi the Congressional Gold Medal.[182] She is the first recipient in American history to receive the prize while imprisoned. More recently, there has been growing criticism of her detention by Burma's neighbours in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, particularly from Indonesia,[183] Thailand,[184] the Philippines[185][186] and Singapore.[187] At one point Malaysia warned Burma that it faced expulsion from ASEAN as a result of the detention of Suu Kyi.[188] Other nations including South Africa,[189] Bangladesh[190] and the Maldives[191] also called for her release. The United Nations has urged the country to move towards inclusive national reconciliation, the restoration of democracy, and full respect for human rights.[192] In December 2008, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution condemning the human rights situation in Burma and calling for Suu Kyi's release—80 countries voting for the resolution, 25 against and 45 abstentions.[193] Other nations, such as China and Russia, are less critical of the regime and prefer to cooperate only on economic matters.[194] Indonesia has urged China to push Burma for reforms.[195] However, Samak Sundaravej, former Prime Minister of Thailand, criticised the amount of support for Suu Kyi, saying that "Europe uses Aung San Suu Kyi as a tool. If it's not related to Aung San Suu Kyi, you can have deeper discussions with Myanmar."[196]

Vietnam, however, did not support calls by other ASEAN member states for Myanmar to free Aung San Suu Kyi, state media reported Friday, 14 August 2009.[197] The state-run Vi?t Nam News said Vietnam had no criticism of Myanmar's decision 11 August 2009 to place Suu Kyi under house arrest for the next 18 months, effectively barring her from elections scheduled for 2010. "It is our view that the Aung San Suu Kyi trial is an internal affair of Myanmar", Vietnamese government spokesman Le Dung stated on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In contrast with other ASEAN member states, Dung said Vietnam has always supported Myanmar and hopes it will continue to implement the "roadmap to democracy" outlined by its government.[198]

Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. The decision of the Nobel Committee mentions:[199]

The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the Nobel Peace Prize for 1991 to Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar (Burma) for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights.

...Suu Kyi's struggle is one of the most extraordinary examples of civil courage in Asia in recent decades. She has become an important symbol in the struggle against oppression...

...In awarding the Nobel Peace Prize for 1991 to Aung San Suu Kyi, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to honour this woman for her unflagging efforts and to show its support for the many people throughout the world who are striving to attain democracy, human rights and ethnic conciliation by peaceful means.

—Oslo, 14 October 1991

In 1995 Aung San Suu Kyi delivered the keynote address at the Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.[200]

Nobel Peace Prize winners (Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, Shirin Ebadi, Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, Mairead Corrigan, Rigoberta Menchú, Prof. Elie Wiesel, U.S. President Barack Obama, Betty Williams, Jody Williams and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter) called for the rulers of Burma to release Suu Kyi in order to "create the necessary conditions for a genuine dialogue with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and all concerned parties and ethnic groups in order to achieve an inclusive national reconciliation with the direct support of the United Nations."[28] Some of the money she received as part of the award helps fund London-based charity Prospect Burma, which provides higher education grants to Burmese students.[201]

On 16 June 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi was finally able to deliver her Nobel acceptance speech (Nobel lecture) at Oslo's City Hall, two decades after being awarded the peace prize.[202][203]

Suu Kyi meeting Barack Obama at the White House in September 2012

In September 2012, Aung San Suu Kyi received in person the United States Congressional Gold Medal, which is the highest Congressional award. Although she was awarded this medal in 2008, at the time she was under house arrest, and was unable to receive the medal. Aung San Suu Kyi was greeted with bipartisan support at Congress, as part of a coast-to-coast tour in the United States. In addition, Aung San Suu Kyi met President Barack Obama at the White House. The experience was described by Aung San Suu Kyi as "one of the most moving days of my life."[204][205]

As of 2014, she is listed as the 61st most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.[22]

Organizations[edit]

Freedom Now, a Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organisation, was retained in 2006 by a member of her family to help secure Aung San Suu Kyi's release from house arrest. The organisation secured several opinions from the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention that her detention was in violation of international law; engaged in political advocacy such as spearheading a letter from 112 former Presidents and Prime Ministers to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urging him to go to Burma to seek her release, which he did six weeks later; and published numerous opeds and spoke widely to the media about her ongoing detention. Its representation of her ended when she was released from house arrest on 13 November 2010.[206]

Aung San Suu Kyi has been an honorary board member of International IDEA and ARTICLE 19 since her detention, and has received support from these organisations.

The Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the Université catholique de Louvain, both located in Belgium, granted her the title of Doctor Honoris Causa.[207]

In 2003, the Freedom Forum recognised Suu Kyi's efforts to promote democracy peacefully with the Al Neuharth Free Spirit of the Year Award, in which she was presented over satellite because she was under house arrest. She was awarded one million dollars.[208]

In June of each year, the U.S. Campaign for Burma organises hundreds of "Arrest Yourself" house parties around the world in support of Aung San Suu Kyi. At these parties, the organisers keep themselves under house arrest for 24 hours, invite their friends, and learn more about Burma and Aung San Suu Kyi.[209]

The Freedom Campaign, a joint effort between the Human Rights Action Center and US Campaign for Burma, looks to raise worldwide attention to the struggles of Aung San Suu Kyi and the people of Burma.

The Burma Campaign UK is a UK-based NGO (Non Governmental Organisation) that aims to raise awareness of Burma's struggles and follow the guidelines established by the NLD and Aung San Suu Kyi.

St. Hugh's College, Oxford, where she studied, had a Burmese theme for their annual ball in support of her in 2006.[210] The University later awarded her an honorary doctorate in civil law on 20 June 2012 during her visitation on her alma mater.[211]

Aung San Suu Kyi is the official patron of The Rafto Human Rights House in Bergen, Norway. She received the Thorolf Rafto Memorial Prize in 1990.

She was made an honorary free person of the City of Dublin, Ireland in November 1999, although a space had been left on the roll of signatures to symbolize her continued detention.

In November 2005 the human rights group Equality Now proposed Aung Sun Suu Kyi as a potential candidate, among other qualifying women, for the position of U.N. Secretary General.[5] In the proposed list of qualified women Suu Kyi is recognised by Equality Now as the Prime Minister-Elect of Burma.[5]

The UN' special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim Gambari, met Aung San Suu Kyi on 10 March 2008 before wrapping up his trip to the military-ruled country.[212]

Aung San Suu Kyi was an honorary member of The Elders, a group of eminent global leaders brought together by Nelson Mandela.[213] Her ongoing detention meant that she was unable to take an active role in the group, so The Elders placed an empty chair for her at their meetings.[214] The Elders have consistently called for the release of all political prisoners in Burma.[215] Upon her election to parliament, she stepped down from her post.[216]

In 2010, Aung San Suu Kyi was given an honorary doctorate from the University of Johannesburg.[217]

In 2011, Aung San Suu Kyi was named the Guest Director of the 45th Brighton Festival.[citation needed]

She was part of the international jury of Human Rights Defenders and Personalities who helped to choose a universal Logo for Human Rights in 2011.[218]

In June 2011, the BBC announced that Aung San Suu Kyi was to deliver the 2011 Reith Lectures. The BBC covertly recorded two lectures with Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, which were then smuggled out of the country and brought back to London.[219] The lectures were broadcast on BBC Radio 4 and the BBC World Service on 28 June 2011 and 5 July 2011.

In November 2011, Suu Kyi received Francois Zimeray, France's Ambassador for Human Rights.

8 March 2012, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird presented Aung San Suu Kyi a certificate of honorary Canadian citizenship and an informal invitation to visit Canada.

In April 2012, British Prime Minister David Cameron became the first leader of a major world power to visit Aung San Su Kyi and the first of a British prime minister since the 1950s. In his visit, Cameron invited San Su Kyi to Britain where she would be able to visit her 'beloved' Oxford, an invitation which she later accepted. She visited Britain on 19 June 2012.

In May 2012, Suu Kyi received the inaugural Václav Havel Prize for Creative Dissent of the Human Rights Foundation.[220]

29 May 2012 PM Manmohan Singh of India visited Aung San Suu Kyi. In his visit, PM invited Aung San Suu Kyi to India as well. She started her 6–day visit to India on 16 November 2012 where among the places she visited was her Alma Mater Lady Shri Ram College in New Delhi.

Seoul National University in South Korea conferred an honorary doctorate degree to Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2013.[221]

University of Bologna, Italy conferred an honorary doctorate degree in Philosophy to Aung San Suu Kyi in October 2013.

Monash University, The Australian National University, University of Sydney and University of Technology, Sydney conferred an honorary degree to Aung San Suu Kyi in November 2013.

Aung San Suu Kyi opened an exhibition in Yagoon for the artist Richard K. Diran, September 28. 2013, of photographs depicting Burmese Tribal people. Richard K. Diran is a convicted child sex offender and has acknowledged to stealing antiquity from Burmese temples for 30 years.[222]

Health problems[edit]

She had surgery for a gynecological condition in September 2003 at Asia Royal Hospital during her house arrest.[223] She had undergone a minor foot surgery in December 2013.[224] Her doctor said that she has no serious health problems but weighs only 48 kg, has low blood pressure and can become weak easily.[225]

Biographical Film[edit]

Main article: The Lady (2011 film)

The life of Suu Kyi and her husband Michael Aris is portrayed in the Luc Besson's 2011 film The Lady, in which they are played by Michelle Yeoh and David Thewlis.[226] Yeoh visited Suu Kyi in 2011 before the film's release in November.