Tuesday, 8 May 2012

Burma's Aung San Suu Kyi given first passport in 24 years



An aide to Suu Kyi, Htin Kyaw, said the passport was received from the Home Ministry.
Suu Kyi applied for the passport following recent political reforms that culminated in her election to parliament last month. Last year, a long-ruling military junta handed over power to an elected, nominally civilian government. Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy, which won 43 seats in the April by-elections, will lead the small opposition bloc.
The passport is valid for three years. She has not had a passport since she returned to Burma in 1988 to take care of her ailing mother, and was required by law then to hand it in.
After becoming leader of the country's pro-democracy movement, she was put under house arrest for 15 of the following 22 years of military rule. Her confinement kept her from attending the ceremony in Norway at which she was awarded the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. She plans to visit the country in June.
During intermittent periods of freedom, Suu Kyi declined opportunities to go abroad for fear she would not be allowed to re-enter Burma, and so was unable to visit her British husband, Oxford don Michael Aris, before his death from cancer in 1999. They last saw each other in 1995, after which the junta denied Aris a visa.

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