Aung San Suu Kyi has become the face of the pro-democracy movement in Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma. Suu Kyi is the general secretary of the National League for Democracy (NLD), a leading opposition party in Burma.
After living in Oxford for many
years, Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988 to nurse her mother.
Aung San Suu Kyi was in her homeland when students and other Burmese demonstrated
against the 26-year-old one-party socialist government and spoke out in
favor of democracy. The military State Law and Order Restoration Council
(SLORC) seized power on September 18, 1988 and crushed the pro-democracy
movement. In the ensuing crackdown, several thousand people were killed.
SLORC allowed multi-party general elections in 1990. The NLD, headed by Aung San Suu Kyi, won the elections in a landslide. SLORC refused to recognize the election results and put elected government leaders under house arrest. Aung San Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her efforts to get democracy in Burma. She was released from house arrest in 1995, but her movements are restricted to the area around Yangon (formerly Rangoon), Myanmar’s capital.
Aung San Suu Kyi, the daughter
of assassinated independence hero Aung San, was held under house arrest
from 1989 to 1995. She was placed back under house arrest in 2000 when
she tried to travel by train to Mandalay in defiance of restrictions put
on her.
On May 6, 2002, Burma's military government has released the pro-democracy
leader. With her 'unconditional' release many supporters are hoping she
will be able to wrest control of the country from the military. Her release
in 1995 did not herald any political change. .
Links
to other websites on Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi
Free Burma:
Aung San Suu Kyi
DFN: Aung San Suu
Kyi
BBC
Profile: Aung San Suu Kyi
Statements
and speeches
Freedom
from fear
Work
for the People's Interests
Video
and audio message of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi's address during the 50th
anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Cynthia Maung
Dr. Cynthia Maung is a physician from the Karen ethnic minority in Burma
who for the past ten years has been living in the refugee camps along
the border of Burma and Thailand. She is known widely as "Dr. Cynthia."
Herself a refugee, Dr. Cynthia has become a "Mother Teresa" to the Burmese refugees along the Thai-Burma border. In 1988, she established a clinic which treats thousands of patients each year for free. She also serves as health advisor to eastern Burma and manages many of the relief projects in the area including medic, midwife, and community health worker training, rice and blanket distribution, mobile medical teams, and sattelite clinic development. Her main clinic serves as a model health care facility and as a training center for the many lay health workers in the area.
The founder and head of the Mae Tao Clinic in the border town of Mae Sot, Thailand, is the 2002 Ramon Magsaysay (Asia's Nobel Prize) awardee for Community Leadership. Dr. Maung is being cited for her humane and fearless response to the urgent medical needs of thousands of refugees and displaced persons along the Thailand-Burma border.
In 1999, Maung was awarded the first Jonathan
Mann Award for humanitarianism. She also won the 1999 John Humphrey Freedom
Award of the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development.
Relevant links:
World
Press Review: Cynthia Maung
Cynthia
Maung's Clinic
Burmese
activists win 1999 John Humphrey Freedom Award
Daw
San San Nwe
Daw San San Nwe is an
internationally acclaimed writer and journalist. Ms. Nwe, a vocal supporter
of the opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Daw Aung San Suu
Kyi, was jailed in Rangoon’s notorious Insein prison for allegedly fabricating
and circulating false news to be used by foreign journalists and the United
Nations Special Rapporteur on Burma. She was arrested with her eldest
daughter, Mo Mo Tun, on August 5, 1994, for involvement as a leading member
of a writers’ group within the National League of Democracy (N.L.D.).
Amidst mounting pressures from international human rights organizations,
Ms. New was released on July 18, 2001.
Her works include books on socio-political
subjects, including such titles as Alone in the Wind and Rain, A Small
Umbrella Does Not Cover Enough, and The Prison of Chalcedony.
One of her short stories, "The Children Who Play in the Back Alleyways",
relates to traumatic memories of the violent suppression of demonstrations
in Burma in 1988.
Sources
and relevant links:
People's
Stories: Freedom
IFEX Alert:
Daw San San Nwe
