When I think of moral and selfless leadership, very few names spring to mind: Jesus, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, Nelson Mandela. These days "leadership" conjures up the greed and selfishness that characterize a big ego, but very occasionally someone comes along in the tradition of Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King...and that someone of our generation is Nobel Peace Prize winner, Aung San Suu Kyi, who insisted on nonviolent opposition against extreme injustice in Burma. She remained under house arrest in Burma for almost 15 of the 21 years from 20 July 1989 until her most recent release on 13 November 2010. Her earliest years of house arrest were especially hard. She had little money and she scarcely ate. She became so malnourished that her hair started to fall out and she developed spondylosis, a degeneration of the spinal column. She would roam her empty house at night and talk to a photograph of her dead father. But as she would later say, tapping her head: "They never got me up here."
Burma is holding elections tomorrow and voters will fill forty-five seats in elections for the national legislature or parliament. This will be the first vote in the country since the end of almost fifty years of military rule. Late last year, Hillary Clinton became the first American Secretary of State to visit Burma in fifty years. Aung San Suu Kyi says that the elections taking place this weekend would not be "free and fair" but that her party still hoped to win as many parliamentary seats as possible.
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| Flag of National League for Democracy/Fighting Peacock flag |
UPDATE: Aung San Suu Kyi wins landmark election: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/apr/01/burma-aung-san-suu-kyi?intcmp=239
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