Before Daw Aung San Suu Kyi [Aung San Suu Kyi is the leader of National League for Democracy (NLD). She led the NLD to victory in the 1990 elections, but the military government ignored the results and put her under house arrest. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991] came to our country, before she returned to our country [from exile in the United Kingdom], during our childhood we don’t know much about politics. We didn’t know much about politics because we are under such a regime. This is also the military regime. And after she returned to our country, we were really inspired that we really trust – believe her as a daughter of our national hero.
And again, after her first release from house arrest, although she is under pressure and she stayed away from her family, but she kept fighting and she also kept encouraging the young people to do more for our future, not for us. And she kept giving such kind of message again and again to the young people. That’s why it really inspired me to work for – not for her, to work for NLD and to work for our generation. You know, now, I have a baby daughter, three and a half years old. At that time, you know, I never thought about the next generation. But now I also realize that if we didn’t do anything in the past, my new generation, my daughter’s generation would be nothing.
So my parents also, they have an important role to encourage me to be engaged in politics, that they really support me to Aung San Suu Kyi. They regard Aung San Suu Kyi as their – how can I say – their daughter, our country’s daughter. So we should take care of her without her father like that. So we have a responsibility to take care of her. But now, we realized that totally relying on her is not enough. We should rely on ourselves. We should nurture new leaders, many new leaders to come in. We should nurture the next generation to be the great leaders for the future of our country.
We believe like that. So during my – as a youth in NLD, I trying to – how can I say – imitate her, not as a fashion or something like that. I try to learn the way she thought and the way she speaks and she also – she is also one of my mentors, you know, that I work closely with her. So she really cares about how to behave in public, or how to organize meetings, or how to set up the intellectual discipline or something like that. So she’s really like our second mother.
Khin Lay is a Burmese civil society and political activist. She was born in Yangon in 1971.
She pursued a career in education, hoping to be a university professor. That ambition changed after Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Burma’s democracy movement, inspired Khin Lay to take an active role in freeing her country. In 1995, Khin Lay joined Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD).
As a member of NLD, Khin Lay endured constant surveillance by the regime. In 2000, she was arrested by authorities for her involvement with the party. After five days of interrogation in which she was blindfolded and deprived of sleep, Khin Lay spent four months in Insein Prison, a facility notorious for its deplorable conditions and use of torture. She was released in 2001.
More recently, Khin Lay has focused on strengthening women’s rights and building a more robust civil society. She founded the Triangle Women Support Group, an organization dedicated to empowering Burmese women, developing their political and professional skills, as well as encouraging greater participation in public life. She believes that fostering a new generation of strong, female leaders is a key component to Burma’s democratization.
Burma, a Southeast Asian country with about 57 million people, is ruled by a military regime that seized power in 1962. Although the reformist National League for Democracy (NLD) won overwhelmingly in a 1990 election, the country’s military rulers ignored the results and arrested NLD leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 “for her nonviolent struggle for democracy and human rights.” The military government held a referendum on a new constitution in 2008 and a parliamentary election in 2010, neither of which was regarded by international observers as free or fair, and both of which resulted in overwhelming majorities for pro-government positions and candidates. The military regime has committed widespread and systematic human rights violations, including extrajudicial killing, torture, rape, and denial of freedom of expression, association, assembly, and religion.
Throughout its existence, the regime has been at war with a number of Burma’s ethnic minority groups. Ethnic minority voters overwhelmingly supported the NLD in the 1990 election, and after the suppression of the democracy movement several of these groups continued or resumed armed resistance to the de facto government. Although the government signed cease-fire agreements with several of these groups ostensibly granting them autonomy within their respective regions, the Burmese military has used a range of brutal techniques, including the killing of civilians, forced labor, rape, and the destruction of homes, crops, and villages, in cease-fire zones as well as in areas where there is still armed resistance.
In 2007, as on several previous occasions, there were mass demonstrations throughout the country demanding freedom and democracy. The 2007 demonstrations were led by Buddhist monks and eventually became known as the “Saffron Revolution” after the color of the monks’ robes. The armed forces brutally suppressed these demonstrations—estimates of the number of protestors killed range from 31 to several thousand—and intensified popular dissatisfaction with the government by the killing, beating, and public humiliation of monks.
The nominally civilian government resulting from the 2010 election has been widely regarded as a façade for continuing military rule. However, in October 2011, the government released 206 of Burma’s estimated 2,000 prisoners of conscience. The next month, the government announced that it would soon release all remaining political prisoners. The NLD, which had declined to participate in the 2010 election, registered to participate in the next election and announced that Aung San Suu Kyi would be among the NLD candidates.
Although the military regime announced in 1989 that it had changed the English name of the country from Burma to “Myanmar,” the United States government and other international supporters of democracy in Burma have generally continued to call the country Burma because this is the name preferred by Aung San Suu Kyi and other democracy advocates who won the 1990 election.
See all Burma videos