Aung San Suu Kyi
Aung San Suu Kyi (born 1945) is a Burmese politician, diplomat, and author who served as State Counsellor of Myanmar and Union Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2016 to 2021. She has been general secretary of the National League for Democracy since its founding in 1988 and was widely described as the de facto leader of Myanmar from 2016 to 2021. She played a central role in Myanmar's transition from military junta to partial democracy and was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
Biography
Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of Aung San, the leader of Burma's independence movement, who was assassinated when she was two. She studied at Oxford and lived abroad for many years before returning to Burma in 1988 during mass protests against military rule.
She co-founded the National League for Democracy and spent most of the next twenty-one years under house arrest. Her party won the 1990 election, but the military refused to hand over power. She received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.
After her release in 2010 and a partial opening of politics, the NLD won the 2015 election. Barred from the presidency, she led the government as State Counsellor from 2016. She was widely criticised abroad for defending the army after its 2017 campaign against the Rohingya. The military overthrew her government in February 2021, and she was sentenced to long prison terms.
