Aung San Suu Kyi

Did you realise, some of the seemingly biggest battles won on this earth, have been achieved not with conflict, but with passive resistance? For example of passive resistance take this WW2 story;

When the Wehrmacht invaded Denmark in 1940, the Danes soon saw that military confrontation would change little except the number of surviving Danes. The Danish government therefore adopted a policy of official co-operation (and unofficial obstruction) which they called "negotiation under protest." On the industrial front, Danish workers subtly slowed all production that might feed the German war machine, sometimes to a perfect standstill. On the cultural front, Danes engaged in symbolic defiance by organizing mass celebrations of their own history and traditions. On the legislative front, the Danish government insisted that since they officially co-operated with Germany, they had an ally's right to negotiate with Germany, and then proceeded to create bureaucratic quagmires which stalled or blocked German orders without having to refuse them outright. Danish authorities also proved conveniently inept at controlling the underground Danish resistance press, which at one point reached circulation numbers equivalent to the entire adult population.


So - Have you heard of Aung San Suu Kyi?

What comes next is a summary of the following Wikipedia entry.

When I hear about people like this, I feel the human race has a chance at survival. :)

Aung San Suu Kyi was born on 19 June 1945. Her father, Aung San, negotiated Burma's independence from the United Kingdom in 1947, and was assassinated by his rivals in the same year.Suu Kyi was educated in English Catholic schools for much of her childhood in Burma. Khin Kyi gained prominence as a political figure in the newly-formed Burmese government. Khin Kyi was appointed as Burmese ambassador to India in 1960, and Suu Kyi followed her there, graduating from Lady Shri Ram College in New Delhi in 1964.[1] Suu Kyi continued her education at St Hugh's College, Oxford, obtaining a B.A. degree in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics in 1967. Upon graduation, Suu Kyi furthered her education in New York, and worked for the United Nations. Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Myanmar in 1988 to take care of her ailing mother. In that year, the long-time leader of the socialist ruling party, General Ne Win, stepped down, leading to mass demonstrations for democratisation, which were violently suppressed. A new military junta took power. Heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence, Aung San Suu Kyi entered politics to work for democratisation, helped found the National League for Democracy on 27 September 1988, and was put under house arrest on 20 July 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.[citation needed] 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's winning the Sakharov Prize that year and the Nobel Peace Prize the following year in 1991. Her sons Alexander and Kim accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf, Alexander's acceptance speech is linked in the External links section of this document. 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. 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. She was repeatedly prevented from meeting with her party supporters, and in September 2000 was again put under house arrest. On 6 May 2002, following secret confidence-building negotiations led by the United Nations, she was released; 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, her caravan was attacked in the northern village of Depayin by a government-sponsored mob, murdering and wounding many of her supporters. Aung San Suu Kyi fled the scene with the help of her driver, Ko Kyaw Soe Lin, but was arrested upon reaching Ye-U. She was imprisoned at Insein Prison in Yangon. After receiving a hysterectomy in September 2003, she was again placed under house arrest in Yangon. In March 2004, Razali Ismail, UN special envoy to Myanmar, met with Aung San Suu Kyi. Ismail resigned from his post the following year, partly because he was denied re-entry to Myanmar on several occasions. On 28 May 2004, the United Nations Working Group for Arbitrary Detention rendered an Opinion (No. 9 of 2004) that her deprivation of liberty was arbitrary, as being in contravention of Article 9 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 1948, and requested that the authorities in Burma set the prisoner free, but the authorities have so far ignored this request. On 28 November 2005, the National League for Democracy confirmed that Suu Kyi's house arrest would be extended for yet another year. Many western countries, as well as the United Nations, have expressed their disapproval of this latest extension. On 20 May 2006, Ibrahim Gambari, UN Undersecretary-General for Political Affairs, met with Aung San Suu Kyi, the first visit by a foreign official since 2004.[6] Suu Kyi's house arrest term was set to expire 27 May 2006, but the Burmese government extended it for another year, flouting a direct appeal from U.N. General Secretary Kofi Annan to Than Shwe. Suu Kyi continues to be imprisoned under the 1975 State Protection Act (Article 10 b), which grants the government the power to imprison persons for up to five years without a trial.On 9 June 2006, Suu Kyi was hospitalised with severe diarrhea and weakness, as reported by a UN representative for National Coalition Government of the Union of Burma. Such claims were rejected by Major-General Khin Yi, the national police chief of Myanmar.