F*ck Tibet . . . Free Burma Now!

Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is a nonviolent pro-democracy activist in Myanmar (Burma). In 1991 she won the Nobel Peace Prize for her peaceful and non-violent struggle under a repressive military regime.

One of her most famous speeches is the Freedom From Fear speech which begins:"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."

Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of Khin Kyi, a prominent Burmese diplomat, and General Aung San, who negotiated Burma's independence from the United Kingdom in 1947 and was assassinated by rivals in the same year. After leaving Burma to study and live in England, Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Myanmar in 1988 to care for her ailing mother. Heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of nonviolence, Aung San Suu Kyi entered politics to work for democratisation, helped found the National League for Democracy on September 27, 1988, and was put under house arrest in 1989. She was offered freedom if she would leave the country, but she refused.

In 1990, the military junta called general elections, which the National League for Democracy won decisively. Under normal circumstances, she would have assumed the office of Prime Minister. Instead the results were nullified, and the military refused to hand over power. This resulted in an international outcry and partly led to Aung San Suu Kyi winning the Sakharov Prize that year and the Nobel Peace Prize in the following one. She used the Nobel Peace Prize's US$1.3 million prize money to establish a health and education trust for the Burmese people.

She was released from house arrest in July 1995, although it was made clear that if she left the country to visit her family in the United Kingdom, she would be denied re-entry. When her husband Michael Aris, a British citizen, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997, the Burmese government denied him an entry visa. Aung San Suu Kyi remained in Burma, and never again saw her husband, who died in March 1999. She remains separated from their children, who remain in the United Kingdom. Suu Kyi remains under house arrest presently.

In 2001, Irish rock band U2 released the single "Walk On", which was written about and dedicated to Aung San Suu Kyi. "Walk On" was banned by the junta.