2020-06-19 Fri

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate, revolutionary and the chairperson of the National League for Democracy in Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi was born on June 19, 1945. Her father, formerly the de facto prime minister of British Burma, was assassinated in 1947. Her mother, Khin Kyi, was appointed ambassador to India in 1960.

Born in Yangon, Myanmar, Aung San Suu Kyi spent much of her early adult years abroad before returning home and becoming an activist. She was placed under house arrest in 1989 and spent 15 of the next 21 years in custody, winning the 1991 Nobel Prize for Peace along the way. Suu Kyi was finally released from house arrest in November 2010 and subsequently held a seat in parliament for the National League for Democracy (NLD) party.

In 1992, she was awarded the Jawaharlal Nehru Award. She has also been honoured with the International Simon Bolivar Prize from the government of Venezuela and Wallenberg Medal in 2011. She was listed as the 61st most powerful woman in the world by Forbes in 2014.

Pictures of Daw Aung San Suu Kyi and Gen. Aung San appeared on banknotes for the first time in 1958. When Daw Aung San Suu Kyi came into power as a leader of the Burmese pro-democracy movement after the 1988 student uprising, these notes were slowly withdrawn from circulation. The new notes depicted lion or elephant on the obverse and the Myanmar’s famous buildings and landscapes on the reverse.

Image Source: https://slate.com/