Military Junta Grants Freedom
to Myanmar’s Opposition Leader

Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who single-handedly personified the struggle of thousands of Myanmar citizens against the country’s military junta, has been released from her seven and a half years of house arrest.
The Oxford-educated daughter of General Aung San, an independence hero assassinated in 1947, she’s been incarcerated for 15 of the past 21 years, since her return to the country that used to be called Burma.
But although as politically articulated as her father was, there’s no easy explanation as to why the military rulers have been so afraid of her. What’s undeniable is that, in trying to silence her, they turned her into a symbol of human rights and the fight for democratic values the world over.
In the end, her release however joyful, will do very little to tackle the serious social problems facing Myanmar today, including extreme poverty, hunger and corruption, while its junta entertains dreams of nuclear prowess, with the help of North Korea and omission of China.
The end of her unjust house arrest ordeal is a great cause for celebration. But one can’t help it but to realize that the country Aung San’s been released to is in even worst shape that it was two decades ago and it may take much more to rescue it from its isolation, obscurantism, and misery.