Aung San Suu Kyi arrest sparks concern from St Hugh's, Oxford

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Suu Kyi, who lived in Park Town, North Oxford, came to power in 2015 when her party clinched an election win in Burma – officially known as Myanmar after being renamed by the military in 1989.

Following a military takeover after complaints of electoral fraud, Suu Kyi was arrested along with members of her National League for Democracy and human rights activists.

St Hugh’s said: “We are very concerned to hear of yet another retreat from human rights and democracy in Myanmar with a military coup and the summary detention of Aung San Suu Kyi and others.”

Suu Kyi, who is the daughter of the founder of the Burmese army Aung San, read philosophy, politics and economics at St Hugh’s, in the 1960s and spent much of the 1980s living in the city with her husband, Tibetan scholar Michael Aris, and their two sons, Kim and Alexander.

After returning to Burma, ostensibly to lead the country to democracy, she was imprisoned and kept under house arrest. She was awarded the freedom of Oxford in 1997, an honour she accepted in person in 2012.

She was stripped of the award in 2017, amid allegations of complicity and lack of action in dealing with the army’s brutal campaign against the country’s Muslim Rohingya population.

Human rights activists have documented a campaign of ethnic cleansing against the Rohingya, with mass rapes and killings and the burning of thousands of homes. However, the country’s government has denied accusations that security forces were involved in the atrocities.

Suu Kyi, 75, was also snubbed by St Hugh’s , which removed an official portrait from its entrance and and her name was removed from the college’s ‘Aung San Suu Kyi Junior Common Room’.

Aung San Suu Kyi enjoying a tea party with Prime Minister David Cameron and local children at Aston Pottery. Picture by Jon Lewis

Aung San Suu Kyi enjoying a tea party with Prime Minister David Cameron and local children at Aston Pottery

The background:

Ms Suu Kyi, now 75, was born on June 19 1945 in Rangoon – now Yangon – in Burma – now officially named Myanmar – and went on to become a symbol of human rights and freedom.

But her reputation suffered due to her response to the crisis that hit the Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority, with many disappointed that she did not do more to uphold human rights.

Following studies abroad, including at Oxford University, Ms Suu Kyi returned home in 1988 and was among the founders of the National League for Democracy (NLD).

Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, she opposed all forms of violence and called on the military leaders to hand over power to a civilian government.

The aim was to establish a democratic society in which the country’s ethnic groups could cooperate in harmony, according to her profile on The Nobel Prize website.

Ms Suu Kyi, daughter of the liberation movement leader Aung San, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while still under house arrest in 1991 for her peaceful struggle against the regime, and momentum grew worldwide for her release.

But she was not freed from detention until 2010, after remaining under house arrest for almost 15 of the 21 years from her arrest in July 1989.

In 2015, Ms Suu Kyi’s political party, the NLD, won in general elections which were the first to be held openly in the country since 1990.

The military kept significant power under the constitution, but the position of state counsellor was created for Ms Suu Kyi to lead the government.

Her two sons’ British citizenship prohibited her from becoming president because of the country’s military-era constitution.

In November 2020, the NLD was declared the victor of Myanmar’s election in a result that saw Ms Suu Kyi return to power for a second five-year term.

But independent rights groups have criticised the disenfranchisement of the Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority and cancellation of the vote in certain areas, including the Rakhine province.

Aung San Suu Kyi in Oxford. Picture by Jon Lewis

Since August 2017, more than 700,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled Myanmar to neighbouring Bangladesh to escape what Myanmar’s military has called a clearance campaign following an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group in Rakhine state.

Yamini Mishra, Amnesty International’s Asia-Pacific regional director, said that in her first term as Myanmar’s de facto head of state, it was “shocking to see how little Aung San Suu Kyi’s government was willing to do to improve the human rights situation”.

In December 2019, Ms Suu Kyi defended the military in a case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, denying it had committed genocide.

Yesterday, an announcement on military-controlled Myawaddy TV on the morning the country’s new Parliament session was to begin, said there will instead be a new election at the end of a one-year state of emergency.

Amnesty International said the arrest of Ms Suu Kyi, senior officials and other political figures was “extremely alarming”.