The non-profit NGO Burma Center Prague and its supporters wish to express their sincerest birthday wishes to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Suu Kyi emerged as the winner of Burma’s last fair elections in 1990, but the regime refused to let her take up her legitimate position. Ever since, she has spent most of the time in prison and under house arrest. In 1991, Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in absentia at the suggestion of the then-president of Czechoslovakia, Václav Havel. To date she remains the only laureate who cannot live in freedom. In 2003 she narrowly escaped assassination, reportedly by the Union Solidarity and Development Association (USDA). That association is now one of the regime’s proxy parties in the upcoming sham elections. Lately, she and more than 2 000 other political prisoners have been barred from participating in the upcoming elections of 2010, which means they far from satisfy even the most basic of democratic principles.
We honor Suu Kyi’s contribution to the peaceful democratization of Burma, her tireless struggle on behalf of the powerless, and her dedication to the unity of all Burma’s people. Even though she is deprived of liberty and defamed by the regime in her own country, she is now and will always be upheld as a symbol of hope in Burma’s dark times.
