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Aung San Suu Kyi, the young woman who sacrificed her bed of roses while on a sojourn to Yangon to her ill mother. When she saw young people in the streets revolting to demand democratic reform, she then entered politics to join the revolution against the dictator General Ne Win; because she had never forgotten the Burmese people, she had never forgotten the fight that her father had led. Who is Aung San Suu Kyi? Aung San Suu Kyi is a Burmese politician, diplomat, and author. She is the daughter of Aung San, a revolutionary Burmese politician who fought for the independence of Burma, and Khin Kyi, ambassador of India and Nepal in 1960. Who is Aung San Suu Kyi’s father? Aung San Suu Kyi’s father is the one who founded Myanmar Armed Forces in 1948. Myanmar Army is the largest army in Southeast Asia after the Vietnam Army. Its main responsibility is to conduct land and military operations. Aung San was the leader of Burma’s independence from British colonial rule. In the late 1930s in Myanmar, during the period of British rule, groups constituted an alliance that they called Burma’s Htwer-Yet (Liberation). One of the groups, the Dobama Asiayone, commonly referred to as Thakins, was a Burmese nationalist group formed in the 1930s of disaffected young intellectuals; most were students. The party, created by Ba Thaung, was built on traditional Buddhist aspects and new political ideals. The slogan of the association was: ‘Burma (Myanmar) is our country; Burmese literature is our literature; the Burmese language is our language. Love our country, raise the standard of our literature, respect our language.’ Aung San was a student. His peers described him as charismatic and passionate about politics. In 1936, he was expelled from the university because he refused to denounce the author of an article he had published in the student newspaper, which criticised a senior university official. The university students, therefore, launched a strike that lasted three months, until Aung San was reinstated at the university. This event turned Aung San’s future upside down: during the strike, his name was published in newspapers across the country, and he became a revolutionary student figurehead nationwide. In 1938, he became president of the Union of Burma Students, and of the University of Rangoon, where he studied law to enter politics. These commitments do not leave him enough time to study and he fails his exam. He then renounces the pursuit of a conventional career and enters into revolutionary politics. Aung San was anti-British and anti-imperialist. He joined the Dobama Asiayone (We Burmans Association) and became Thakin. Thakin means, lord or master, a title used informally for Westerners in Burma, but Burmese used it to mean that Burmese were the true masters of their country. In 1939, Dobama Asiayone called for a national uprising against British rule. Aung San travels to China with a partner to find associates. As most of the members of the association were Communists, they sought help from the Chinese Communists, but they were detected by the Japanese authorities, who offered their cooperation. Aung San formed a secret intelligence force with the Japanese called Minami Kikan and directed by Colonel Suzuki. The plan was to close the road to Burma and support the Burmese Homeland Rebellion. Aung San returns to Burma and enlists twenty-nine young men for military training under the Japanese army on the island of Hainan in China. The 30 men would later become known as the ‘Thirty Comrades of Myanmar History’ and were seen as the beginning of Myanmar’s modern army. Once the Japanese invasion was ready, the soldiers recruited Burmese in Thailand and founded the Burmese Independence Army (BIA). The Japanese army and the Burma Independence Army unit ousted the British Empire and China from Burma, and in August 1943, the Japanese declared the sovereignty of the Burma state. Yet, the Burmese government held no power over the country. Many Burmese felt that the Japanese had no intention of giving them independence and that they were being manipulated. Anticipating the Japanese occupation, Aung San organised the Burmese Independence Army (BIA) in 1942. The BIA initially consisted of 227 Burmese and 74 Japanese, later expanded by large numbers of volunteers and recruits. He connected with communist leaders Thakin Than Tun and Thakin Soe and socialist leaders Ba Swe and Kyaw Nyein, and developed the Anti-Fascist Organisation (AFO) in 1944; after relabelled the Anti-Fascist League for Personal Freedom (AFPFL). Aung San aspired for a fairer and egalitarian society. In 1945, the Burmese army with the succour of the allies drove out the Japanese, and after World War II, Aung San reached an agreement on Burma’s independence from Britain under ‘the Aung San-Attlee Agreement’. Aung San was the 5th Prime Minister of the British Crown Colony of Burma from 1946 to 1947. He conducted his party, the Anti-Fascist People’s Freedom League, to victory in the 1947 Burmese general election, before being assassinated with almost all of his cabinet. Aung San was murdered when Aung San Suu Kyi was only two years old. For his work towards Burmese independence and the unification of the country, Aung San was revered as the father of the nation and the national hero of modern Burma. On 4 January 1948, a few months after the assassination of Aung San, Burma obtained its independence. Aung San Suu Kyi’s Picture In 1960, Aung San Suu Kyi went to India with her mother, mother, Khin Kyi, who had been appointed Myanmar ambassador to Delhi. After graduating from the University of Delhi in 1964, she went to the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, where she studied philosophy, politics, and economics. There, she meets her husband, the academic Michael Aris. In 1968, worked at the United Nations for three years, she married in 1972 and had two children. She lived and worked in Japan and Bhutan. Then she moved to the UK with her boys, Alexander and Kim. When she returns to Yangon in 1988 to care