Burmese dissident Aung San Suu Kyi expresses solidarity with Ales Bialiatski
Aung San Suu Kyi, one of
the world famous dissidents, joined the international campaign for the
protection of the Belarusian human rights defender Ales Bialiatski,
vice-President of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).
Aung San Suu Kyi (Burmese: [àuɴ sʰáɴ sṵ tɕì];
born 19 June 1945) is a Burmese opposition politician and the General Secretary
of the National League for Democracy. In the 1990 general election, Aung San
Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won 59% of the national votes and
81% (392 of 485) of the seats in Parliament. She had, however, already been
detained under house arrest before the elections. She remained under house
arrest in Burma
for almost 15 of the 21 years from 20 July 1989 until her release on 13
November 2010. Aung San Suu Kyi received the Rafto Prize and the Sakharov Prize
for Freedom of Thought in 1990 and the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991. In 1992 she was
awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for International Understanding by the
Government of India and the International Simón Bolívar Prize from the
government of Venezuela.
In 2007, the Government of Canada made her an honorary citizen of that country,
one of only five people ever to receive the honor. Aung San Suu Kyi is the
third child and only daughter of Aung San, considered to be the father of
modern-day Burma.
On finding about Ales’s situation, Aung San Suu Kyi also sent him a postcard to
the remand prison in Minsk
where he is still kept on charges of tax evasion on an especially large scale.
