Magical Monday/9

Mondays are full of madness! Mondays for most people brings out the colour blue (Monday Blues). But like so many things, is it just a figment of our imagination? So if we change our attitute, is it possible to change Manic Monday into Magic Monday? What if we feed it into our system that Monday will be a grand day? It will be a day when our energy levels will be the higest because we will be refreshed after a break and that we will start a new week with zest and high spirits! What if we tell ourselves at the start of the week that this week we will be unstoppable, be a powerhouse and race ahead,  could it change things? I believe it could :)

And believing is the first step towards changing things for good !! :)

This is my ninth  post in the Magical Monday series of inspirational stories aimed at motivating us to bring out our best on the first day of the week! 

Today the story is about a politician and activist from Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi (born June 1945) who has been kept under house arrest for almost 15 years of the past 20 years having been released only recently in 2010.  As of 2014, she is listed as the 61st most powerful woman in the world by Forbes.

She is the chairperson of the National League of Democracy which is the oppisition political party in Burma. Even though her party won the 1990 general elections , she was not allowed to take charge and was instead put under house arrest making her one of the world's most prominent political prisoners.

Aung San Suu ki had political leanings right from her childhood as her father was the founder of the modern Burmese army and negotiated Burma's independence from the British Empire in 1947. However, she lost her father as he was assassinated by his rivals in 1947 itself.

Suu Kyi's mother gained prominence as a political figure in the newly formed Burmese government and was appointed Burmese ambassador to India and Nepal and this gave an oppurtunity to Suu Ki to complete her graduate degree in New Delhi, India. 

She then moved to Oxford to complete a B.A. degree in Psycology, Politics and Economics and following that to New York City to work with UN for 3 years. Around this time she met her husband Dr M Aris and moved into family life (married in 1972). She had two sons, Alexander Aris (born in 1973) and Kim (born in 1977).

In 1988 Suu Kyi returned to Burma, at first to tend for her ailing mother but later to lead the pro-democracy movement. Aris' visit in Christmas 1995 turned out to be the last time that he and Suu Kyi met, as Suu Kyi remained in Burma and the Burmese dictatorship denied him any further entry visas. Aris was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1997 which was later found to be terminal. Despite appeals from prominent figures and organizations, the Burmese government would not grant Aris a visa, saying that they did not have the facilities to care for him, and instead urged Aung San Suu Kyi to leave the country to visit him. She was at that time temporarily free from house arrest but was unwilling to depart, fearing that she would be refused re-entry if she left, as she did not trust the military junta ' s assurance that she could return.

Aris died on his 53rd birthday on 27 March 1999. Since 1989, when his wife was first placed under house arrest, he had seen her only five times, the last of which was for Christmas in 1995. She was also separated from her children, who live in the United Kingdom, but starting in 2011, they have visited her in Burma.

Twice her cavalcade was attacked and there was a threat to her life. In1996, the motorcade that she was traveling in with other National League for Democracy  leaders was attacked in Yangon. About 200 men swooped down on the motorcade, wielding metal chains, metal batons, stones and other weapons. The car that Aung San Suu Kyi was in had its rear window smashed. The NLD lodged an official complaint with the police, and according to reports the government launched an investigation, but no action was taken.

In May 2003, a government sponsored mob attacked her caravan in a northern village, murdering and wounding many of her supporters. Aung San Suu Kyi fled the scene with the help of her driver but was arrested later and imprisoned by the government. 

It was only in 2010 , after a lot of pressure from UN that Suu Ki was released from house arrest.

Even when such difficult circumstances were created for this brave woman she held her footing steadfast and fought for her beliefs peacefully never giving into the pressure.