Sakharov Network

Aung San Suu Kyi, the opposition politician and winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize, was born in 1947, and was awarded the Sakharov prize in 1990.
In August 1988, the military had broken a country-wide general strike for democracy and against Myanmar's then government and assumed power itself. Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Myanmar to head the democracy movement. However, the military regime carried out bloody reprisals, placing her and hundreds of members of the National League for Democracy (NLD), which she had founded, under house arrest in 1989. Despite the success of the NLD in the free parliamentary elections held in 1990, the military regime remained in power by imposing martial law. Aung San Suu Kyi refused to go to exile and was only released after six years, in July 1995. Aung San Suu Kyi expressed her convictions in these words: 'Even under the most oppressive state machinery courage always resurfaces, for fear is not natural condition of civilised human beings.'
On 30 May 2003 Aung San Suu Kyi was detained once again, along with 19 other members of the NLD, and placed under house arrest, cut off from all contact with her family, her friends and political supporters. In October 2004 the EU tightened its sanctions against Myanmar after the regime failed to comply with its demands, including the release of Aung San Suu Kyi and an end to the harassment of the NLD. Aung san Suu Kyi continues to speak out in favour of national dialogue, free elections, democracy and respect for human rights in her country. In May 2007, Myanmar renewed her detention for a further year which would keep her under house arrest for more than eleven and a half of the last eighteen years.
Following the violent repression of anti-government demonstrations in Burma in September 2007, the European Parliament decided to voice its support for the Burmese protesters and condemned the brutal response by the Burmese authorities in its resolution of 27 September 2007.