Mirror Mirror Series: Aung San Suu Kyi
Hiya all!
We’re gonna start a new blog series on women who can inspire you to do great things.
Belinda x
You can’t judge a book by its cover so why should human beings be any different? We all have amazing stories.
Today we’re going to look at the Nobel Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi. She was born on the 19th of June 1945 in Burma. She is most famous for her activism for human rights and her role in the political party National League for Democracy.
In 1988 she made a pivotal speech to half a million protesting people outside the Shwedagon Pagoda in the capitol; they were calling for democracy to be introduced into Burma.
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.”
Their pleas for democracy were ignored and even after a general election in 1990 where the National League for Democracy (NLD) was a clear winner, the results were nullified and the Burmese military refused to hand over power.
Aung San Suu Kyi has spent 15 of the 21 years of her political career under house arrest; she even won a Nobel Peace Prize for her non-violent struggle
for democracy and human rights while she was incarcerated in 1991. She was released for the last time in November 2010.
Because of her fearlessness, Burma is now well on its way towards a democratic government. Basic human rights have been restored to thousands of unjustly imprisoned people who opposed the military run government during the revolution. Censorship has been somewhat relaxed, and the economy is going through reforms.
She is the face of a revolution, her legacy will be the hope she inspired in millions of Burmese people who wanted more from the world they lived in.
Information provided by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi and http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1991/kyi-bio.html
For further information:
Freedom From Fear by Aung San Suu Kyi
published by Penguin in February 2010
Paperback 416 pages
ISBN-13:9780141039497
ISBN-10:0141039493
