Aung San Suu Kyi: The Fall of an Icon

The Forum

Electric Burma: The Concert for Aung San Suu Kyi - Words I Never Said

Gone with the Wind

Burma: A Human Tragedy

Aung San Suu Kyi: Lady of No Fear

Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country

Aung San Suu Kyi (born 19 June 1945), sometimes abbreviated to Suu Kyi, is a Burmese politician who served as State Counsellor of Myanmar and 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.
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 the president due 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 following 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. Later, 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 she was sentenced to two terms of three years' imprisonment to be served concurrent to each other. 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.



Aung San Suu Kyi

Acted in

Aung San Suu Kyi: The Fall of an Icon

The Forum

Electric Burma: The Concert for Aung San Suu Kyi - Words I Never Said

Gone with the Wind

Burma: A Human Tragedy

Aung San Suu Kyi: Lady of No Fear

Burma VJ: Reporting from a Closed Country