THE LADY'S DESTINY

摘要

As the jubilant crowds surged around Aung San Suu Kyi on her release from house arrest in 2010,1 couldn't but think of David and Goliath. How had such a fragile figure of a woman singlehandedly managed to withstand the might of one of the world's most brutal military regimes for the past 22 years? She has had three particularly close brushes with death at its hands: in 1989 she faced down the guns of hostile soldiers who had been ordered to shoot her where she stood; a few years later she survived a hunger strike intended to get her fellow party workers released from prison; and more recently still, in 2003, she miraculously escaped an assassination attempt while on the campaign trail. Her resolute determination to establish democracy in Burma has rightfully earned her a place alongside Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi. Yet behind Suu Kyi's apparently unshakable courage lies a story of immense personal sacrifice. For during her long years under house arrest in Rangoon, her two sons were growing up in England without her, while her husband, the Oxford academic Michael Aris, died in 1999 without ever being allowed to say goodbye. Few of us could imagine being asked to choose our country over our family, as she has effectively had to do. Fewer still could imagine living so stoically with the ongoing consequences of that choice.