UN’s Call to Release Aung San Suu Kyi; A Squander.

Aung San Suu Kyi is a politician and opposition leader of Myanmar. She has gone on to win the Nobel Prize for Peace in the year 1991. She was very influential within the government from 2016 where she held the position of state counsellor which made her the “de facto” leader of the country. She was sidelined in the year 2021 when the military of Myanmar seized power over the country.

Having her father assassinated when she was just two years old, Aung San Suu Kyi completed her education at the University of Oxford. When she had to return to Myanmar from England as a result of her mother’s failing health, she had to witness the mass slaughter of protesters and unresponsive military rule of strongman U Ne Win, she decided to stay back in Myanmar to speak out against him and to be a non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights in the country.

The year after her struggle began, the newly formed militant government of Myanmar placed Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest. Strong in her beliefs and will to fight, when the military offered to release her if she left Myanmar, she with might, stated that she would never leave until and unless the country was returned to civilian government and political prisoners were freed.

San Suu Kyi’s political party, “The National League for Democracy” (NLD), won a majority of parliament seats in the year 1990 but this result, however, was ignored by the military government. Even when she had to receive her Nobel prize, she couldn’t leave due to house arrest so her son went in place of her and received the award on her behalf.

Once released, the military did not even give her time to breathe before the house arrested her once again for apparently having violated restrictions by attempting to have travelled outside of Yangon. In 2009, a United Nations body declared her detention illegal under Myanmar’s law.

A constant battle between freedom and arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi was released in 2010 and despite winning the election in 2015, the Myanmar constitution forbade her from becoming President because she had children who were foreign nationals.

In 2020, her NLD won a landslide majority, which ended up even being more votes she got in 2015 but that did not hold much of a value with the “powerful” military who claimed the results to be an election fraud and on the day a newly formed parliament was to sit for the first time, they arrested Aung San Suu Kyi along with many other political leaders, this proved to be fortunately for them as a state emergency was declared and the military assumed power over the state for an entire year.

Recently, UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres has urged the military to release Aung San Suu Kyi. “We reiterate our call for the immediate release of all those who are arbitrarily detained and that includes President Win Myint and State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi”, Eri Kankeo, associate spokesperson of Guterres said in an official statement.

The people of Myanmar haven’t been quiet ever since Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested, they expressed their sentiments by setting fire to army uniforms and chanting calls for democracy. The military has struggled to impose its power on Myanmar ever since the arrest in the parliament- it has faced protests, strikes and resurgence of conflict in the borderlands. Guterres, in a discussion hosted by the Washington Post, said the UN would work to mobilise the international community “to make sure the coup fails”. He also went on to say “ I hope that democracy will be able to progress again in Myanmar….but for that, all the prisoners must be released, the constitutional order must be re-established, and I hope that the international community will be able to come together.”

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