Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi has devoted her life to the non-violent struggle for democracy in Burma.

She spent much of her childhood attending English-speaking Catholic schools and studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Oxford before gaining a Phd from the University of London.

In 1988 she returned to Burma to care for her ill mother and, prompted by a violent supression of demonstrations calling for democracy, founded the National League for Democracy later that year.

In 1990 her party won a landslide victory in the general election but she was denied power by the military junta and placed under house arrest, where she remained until 1995.

Upon her release, she was told she would be denied entry to Burma if she visited Britain to see her family. Her British husband, Michael Aris, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997. She never saw him again, and he died in 1999.

In 2000 she was again placed under house arrest and having been temporarily released in 2003, during which she survived an assassination attempt, was returned to custody where she remains to this day.

A winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, she continues to campaign for democratic elections.

'It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it' - Aung San Suu Kyi

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