Aung San Su Kyi ( Nobel Peace Icon)

Nobel Peace Icon Suu Kyi in Myanmar Democracy War


YANGON (Reuters) - Aung San Suu Kyi, widely expected to be released from house arrest in the Myanmar capital any day, went from being a housewife in the English countryside to one of the world's most recognized political prisoners in the space of a few chaotic months.


Nobel Peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy holds a press conference in Yangon in this February 25, 1999 file photo. REUTERS/Patrick de Noirmont

The daughter of Myanmar independence hero Aung San, Suu Kyi became an international symbol when she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 while serving another period of house arrest -- from 1989 to 1995.

But despite the steely determination with which she has faced up to Myanmar's military rulers, the slight 56-year-old has brought the country no closer to democracy.

The resource-rich country of 45 million people -- once known as Asia's rice basket -- has been ruled with an iron fist by the military since a 1962 coup.

Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD) won the country's last elections, in 1990, by a landslide, but has never been allowed to govern.

Suu Kyi, her aides and party members have been locked up, harassed and intimidated ever since.

She has been confined to her lakeside home on Yangon's University Avenue since September 2000, a prisoner in all but name, without the use of a telephone and with her visitors restricted to a handful of diplomats.

Her latest spell of house arrest, never formally announced by the junta, was imposed after she attempted to leave Yangon on a train to visit supporters in the provincial city of Mandalay.


"SECOND STRUGGLE"

Suu Kyi spent much of her life abroad before returning to her family's home on Yangon's Inya Lake in April 1988 to care for her ailing mother just as resentment of military rule boiled over into pro-democracy protests across the country.

She first spoke to crowds of democracy protesters from the steps of the capital's historic Shwedagon Pagoda on August 26 that year.

People seeing her for the first time were struck by the resemblance to her father Aung San, the hero of the campaign for independence from British rule in the 1940s.

"I could not, as my father's daughter, remain indifferent to all that was going on," she told the huge crowd.

"This national crisis could, in fact, be called the second struggle for independence."

The military crushed the democracy uprising the following month. Thousands were killed and imprisoned but the generals promised an election.

In 1989, Suu Kyi broke a taboo by publicly attacking retired dictator Ne Win as the source of Myanmar's ills. This sealed her popular appeal, but also her fate -- she was placed under house arrest on July 19, 1989, and remained there for six years.


LOUD AND CLEAR MESSAGE

Her message to the military has always been loud and clear -- she wants an open dialogue with the junta and Myanmar's ethnic minorities to try to end the nation's political stalemate.

The generals refused to recognize her, questioning her patriotism by calling her by her married name, "Mrs Michael Aris", and accusing her of being a traitor and an "axe handle" or tool of the British and U.S. governments and their neo-colonial designs.

She has always refused to leave the country, knowing she would not be allowed back in.

Suu Kyi's husband, an Oxford academic, was denied a visa to visit her even when he was dying of prostate cancer. He died in March 1999.

The government said she was a rabble-rouser who wanted Western-style democracy before Myanmar was ready for it.

But the NLD stood steadfastly behind Suu Kyi, insisting there would be no talks unless she was included.

In October 2000, encouraged by U.S. Special Envoy to Myanmar Razali Ismail, the military finally accepted this argument and began secretive talks with Suu Kyi.


"FREEDOM FROM FEAR"

Suu Kyi was born in Yangon, then called Rangoon, on June 19, 1945. She was educated in Myanmar and India where her mother was an ambassador. She later studied at Oxford and later worked with the United Nations in New York.

In 1972, she married Aris and they raised two sons while moving between Bhutan, India and Japan.

Suu Kyi, who says arrests for her and other activists are an "occupational hazard" of the democracy movement, has always played down the hardships she has faced compared with those the Myanmar people have endured. She calls the struggle of the people one of freedom from fear.

"For me, real freedom is freedom from fear and unless you can live free from fear you cannot live a dignified human life."