Aung San Suu Kyi is the daughter of one of Burma's most cherished heroes, the martyred General Aung San, who led his country's fight for independence from Great Britain in the 1940s and was killed for his beliefs in 1947. Suu Kyi has equaled her father's heroics with her calm but passionate advocacy of freedom and democracy in the country now called Myanmar, a name chosen by one of the most insensitive and brutal military dictatorships in the world.Heavily influenced by Mahatma Gandhi's philosophy of non-violence, Aung San Suu Kyi entered politics to work for democratisation, helped found the National League for Democracy on 27 September 1988, and was put under house arrest on 20 July 1989. She was offered freedom if she would leave the country, but she refused.

In 1990, the military junta called a general election, which the National League for Democracy won decisively. Under normal circumstances, she would have assumed the office of Prime Minister. Instead, the results were nullified, and the military refused to hand over power. This resulted in an international outcry and partly led to Aung San Suu Kyi's winning the Sakharov Prize that year and the Nobel Peace Prize the following year in 1991. Her sons Alexander and Kim accepted the Nobel Peace Prize on her behalf. Aung San Suu Kyi used the Nobel Peace Prize's 1.3 million USD prize money to establish a health and education trust for the Burmese people. The Myanmar government currently has Aung San Suu Kyi imprisoned in Yangon.

"It is not power that corrupts but fear. Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those who are subject to it."

~ Aung San Suu Kyi

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Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aung_San_Suu_Kyi