Aung San Suu Kyi

Aung San Suu Kyi (born 19 June 1945) is the daughter of independence leader Aung San and a central figure in Myanmar's pro-democracy movement. She co-founded the National League for Democracy (NLD) in 1988 amid the nationwide uprising against military rule. Although the NLD won the 1990 general election decisively, the ruling junta refused to transfer power, and she spent roughly 15 of the next 21 years under house arrest in Yangon.

She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights. After her release in November 2010 and Myanmar's partial political opening, the NLD swept the 2015 elections. Constitutionally barred from the presidency because her sons hold foreign citizenship (Article 59(f) of the 2008 Constitution), she governed as State Counsellor — a post created in 2016 — while Htin Kyaw and later Win Myint held the presidency.

Her international reputation was severely damaged by the 2017 Rohingya crisis, when the Myanmar military's "clearance operations" in Rakhine State drove more than 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh. In December 2019 she personally appeared before the International Court of Justice at The Hague to defend Myanmar against The Gambia's genocide case under the 1948 Genocide Convention, denying genocidal intent. Multiple human rights bodies, Amnesty International, and several cities revoked honours previously granted to her.

The NLD won another landslide in November 2020, but on 1 February 2021 the Tatmadaw, led by Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, seized power and detained her. She has since been convicted in a series of closed-door trials on charges including incitement, corruption, and breaches of the Official Secrets Act, receiving cumulative sentences initially exceeding 30 years, later partially reduced. She remains in military custody, and the NLD was dissolved by the junta-appointed election commission in 2023.