Aung San Suu Kyi (1945- )

Burmese opposition leader. She was born on 19 June 1945, the daughter of the Burmese national hero Aung San, who died in 1947 during the struggle to achieve independence from Britain. After studying at Rangoon, New Delhi and Oxford, she held a number of United Nations posts, and wrote a biography of her father, before settling down to a quiet life in 1972 with her husband, the British academic Michael Aris.

In 1988, Suu Kyi returned to Burma to care for her dying mother. She became caught up in the political turbulence resulting from the mass demonstrations in favour of democracy and against the dictatorial military rule of General Saw Maung.

After being elected secretary of the new National League for Democracy, she led a mass movement for non-violent change. Despite being placed under house arrest in 1989, her party won the 1990 elections in a landslide victory. A year later, she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, having been nominated by the Czech president Václav Havel.

Suu Kyi was released from confinement in July 1995, but her actions were still restricted by the military government, which made it clear that, if she left the country, she would be denied re-entry. This meant that she was unable to visit her husband before he died of cancer in Britain in March 1999. She was again under house arrest from September 2000 to May 2002; then in May 2003, after she and many of her supporters were violently attacked by a government-sponsored mob, she was captured and placed under house arrest. She remains in detention, much to the disapproval of the rest of the world.

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