Aung San Suu Kyi was born in 1945 in Yangon, Myanmar, what was formerly recognized as Rangoon. She was educated in India and England, where she attended the University of Oxford. There, she met a man named Michael Aris and soon they were married.
In 1988, Aung returned to Myanmar, sharing her new revelations about democracy inspired by Martin Luther King and Mahatma Ghandi. Also in that year, she created the National League for Democracy (also known as NLD; see image at bottom of this page).
In July 1989, Aung was put under house arrest by the military government for appearing at and creating mass gatherings about democracy. The problem was that mass gathering were illegal in Myanmar.
While still under house arrest, in May 1990, 80% of the seats in Parliament were elected to the NDL. However, the government refused to allow the seats to be taken.
On July 10, 1995, Aung was released from house arrest, yet she refused to leave the country because if she left, she could never return again. She continued spreading the thoughts of democracy because she thought Myanmar needed democracy to survive. After all, Myanmar has one of the worst human rights ratings in the world.
In 1990, Aung won the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought and also the Nobel Prize in 1991. In 1996, Aung was once more put under virtual house arrest, although she still received her doctor of laws degree in Washington D.C. at American University in 1997 and wrote a book titled Freedom from Fear and Other Writings about her father and Myanmar.
