Aung San Suu Kyi to be Honored in Europe
June 13, 2012
Aung San Suu Kyi left Myanmar today for a 16-day European trip that will include her acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize that she was awarded in 1991. At the time, Myanmar’s military junta refused to allow her to leave the country to accept the award.
After a violent military coup in Myanmar in 1988, Suu Kyi rose to prominence as the leader of the opposition and co-founder of the National League for Democracy (NLD). In 1990, the NLD won 392 of 492 seats in parliamentary elections. However, the military refused to relinquish power and arrested many of the party’s leaders. Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest and spent much of the next 20 years confined to her home in Yangon. After the government relaxed some of the country’s political and economic restrictions in 2011, Aung San Suu Kyi in 2012 was elected to Myanmar’s parliament.
Aung San Suu Kyi (© Candace Scharsu, Archive Photos)
While in Europe, Suu Kyi will address the International Labor Organization, a United Nations agency, at the Palais des Nations in Geneva, Switzerland; speak before both houses of the British Parliament in London; and be the guest of honor at a concert in Dublin, Ireland.
The trip will conclude in Paris, where she will be the guest of French President Francois Hollande. She is to be honored by France for her “fight for democracy and the rights of man and to reaffirm France’s will to support the political transition in Myanmar.”
Additional World Book articles:
- Myanmar 1988 (a Back in Time article)
- Myanmar 1990 (a Back in Time article)
- Myanmar 1991 (a Back in Time article)
- Myanmar 2000 (a Back in Time article)
- Myanmar 2011 (a Back in Time article)
