Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace laureate, is a world-renowned figure who symbolises the struggle of Burma’s people to be free. She was born in 1945, the daughter of Burma’s independence hero, General Aung San, who was assassinated when she was two years old.
Aung San Suu Kyi was educated in Burma, India, and the United Kingdom. After living for many years in Oxford, she returned to Burma in 1988 to nurse her dying mother. She soon became engaged in the country’s nationwide democracy uprising, which the military regime suppressed with brute force. She was a key figure in forming a new pro-democracy party, the National League for Democracy (NLD).
As NLD General Secretary, Aung San Suu Kyi gave numerous speeches calling for freedom and democracy. Her party won the 1990 general election in a landslide victory, but was not allowed to take power. Aung San Suu Kyi herself was placed under house arrest in 1989, and spent fifteen of the next twenty years in detention.
Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and was finally released from house arrest in 2010.
In May 2011, Aung San Suu Kyi had a dialogue with HKU students, staff and alumni through a real-time televised broadcast as a featured speaker of the Centenary Distinguished Lecture series.
In recognition of her commitment to non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights, the University has resolved to confer upon her the degree of Doctor of Laws honoris causa.
