But if Aung San's legacy has profoundly affected his daughter's choices, so too has the disciplined upbringing given her by her widowed mother, Daw Khin Kyi. Crucially, her martyred father - General Aung San - led Burma to independence from the British. But having given her commitment to her people, nothing can deflect Suu Kyi from the course she has adopted. Aris' death in 1999 was yet another cruel twist of the knife. Aung San Suu Kyi has also endured involuntary separation from her family - her English husband Dr Michael Aris, and their two sons. In 2003, during an attempt on her life at Depayin, she witnessed the massacre of scores of her followers. In the years between she has faced constant physical and psychological harassment. Today she is again under house arrest, seemingly for good.

In 1989 she was placed under house arrest for the first time. But her leadership of the Burmese democracy movement, and her ardent advocacy of human rights, have landed her in desperate trouble. Awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, she has steadfastly opposed Burma's brutal military regime, instituted by General Ne Win in 1962, since 1988. 43 b/w photographs.Like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela, Aung San Suu Kyi has become an iconic figure. In Perfect Hostage, the most thorough biography of Suu Kyi to date, Justin Wintle tells both the story of the Burmese people and the story of an ordinary person who became a hero.

'The trouble is that I know too much.'-Aung San Suu Kyiīurma is a country where, as one senior UN official puts it, 'just to turn your head can mean imprisonment or death.' Aung San Suu Kyi is considered to be Burma's best hope for freedom, and, because of her unwavering commitment to nonviolent resistance to the country's brutal military junta, she has been under house arrest since 1989.Įlected Prime Minister, she was prevented from taking office, but despite failing health, vilification at the hands of the Burmese media, and actual imprisonment in one of the world's most appalling jails, Suu Kyi has persevered in a campaign of nonviolent protest as unflagging as those of Gandhi, King, and Mandela, which earned her the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991.

The Perfect Hostage by Justin Wintle