After having spent 15 of the last 21 years under house arrest, where she was not even allowed to go out into her garden, Aung San Suu Kyi has finally been released. It's the best news I've read in months, although she can just be re-arrested again, as happened in the past. But for the moment, many people around the world are jubilant. Former South African President Frederik Willem de Klerk, a Peace Nobel Prize Laureate, and Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba gave a joint toast in her honor at a meeting to campaign against nuclear weapons. Archbishop Desmond Tutu lauded her as "a global symbol of moral courage." The personal cost of her moral courage is unfathomable. She was not allowed to see her husband before he died of cancer in 1999, and she has not seen her children in 10 years. Today, she finally spoke on the phone to her younger son, who is in Thailand trying to get a visa to Burma.
President Obama claims her as a hero of his. She is certainly my hero.
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