Burmese Junta Releases Nobel Laureate Dissident Aung San Suu Kyi From House Arrest

Opposition leader and daughter of one Burma's architects of independence from the British, Aung San Suu Kyi, has been released from house arrest. She had spent the last 15 of the last 21 years under house arrest on orders from Burma's ruling military junta.

The Burmese military (aka the Tatmadaw) seized power in an August 1988 coup and have operated under the banner of the State Peace and Development Council since the 1990s- the South East Asian nation has been governed by one faction of the military or another since 1962.

Among the accomplishments the State Peace and Development Council can take credit for is renaming the country to 'Mynmar', moving the capital from the country's largest city Rangoon (aka Yangon) to the newly-constructed inland city of Naypyidaw, adopting a new flag as recently as last month (see below), or crushing the 2007 'Saffron Revolution'.


Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won 59% of the votes in a 1990 election called by the Burmese junta, which would've given her party roughly 80% representation in Parliament and effectively made her prime minister. Instead, the junta had nullified the election results and placed Suu Kyi under house arrest

Suu Kyi's release came a few days after widely criticized elections in which the ruling junta and their proxies retained power, leading some to believe that Suu Kyi's release (which isn't unconditional) was a diversion to prevent further scrutiny of the Nov. 7 balloting.