... was born in 1945, in a small village just outside Rangoon, which was then the capital of British Burma. Her father, Aung San, is regarded as the founding father of modern Burma. He became Premier of the Crown Colony in September 1946, but was assassinated less than ten months later – six months before independence.
Aung San Suu Kyi studied at the universities of Delhi and Oxford, graduating from the latter in 1968. While at Oxford she met the English historian Michael Aris, and they married in 1972. They had two sons.
Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988, initially to care for her ailing mother, but rose to prominence in the 1988 Uprisings (a series of national protests against the ruling military junta). She became General Secretary of the National League for Democracy (NLD), of which she had been a co–founder. In the 1990 elections, the NLD won 81% of the seats in Parliament, but the results were nullified, as the junta refused to hand over power. This resulted in an international outcry, but Aung San Suu Kyi had already been detained under house arrest before the elections. She 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. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, the citation describing her as "an outstanding example of the power of the powerless".
Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest in November 2010, on the day of the elections - which her party had boycotted, resulting in a decisive victory for the military–backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. Two years later she became a member of the House of Representatives (the lower hose of the Burmese Parliament) when her party won 43 of 45 available seats. In 2015 elections the NLD won a landslide victory, taking 86% of the seats in the Assembly of the Union – ensuring that its preferred candidates were elected as President and Second Vice President. Although Aung San Suu Kyi was prohibited from becoming President, as her late husband and children are foreign citizens, she assumed the newly created role of State Counsellor – effectively the head of government.
Aung San Suu Kyi has since drawn criticism from several countries, organisations and figures, over her alleged inaction over the persecution of the Rohingya people in Rakhine State and her refusal to accept that Myanmar's military has committed massacres. Under her leadership, Myanmar has also drawn criticism for prosecutions of journalists.
This article is an edited version of the introduction to Wikipedia's Aung San Suu Kyi page.
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