Portrait of a Lady

Portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi by Platon, 2010

The fascinating story behind the photograph.

Aung San Suu Kyi is free

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.

Courage

Aung San Suu Kyi in her yard, 1995. 

Photo by Steve McCurry, Magnum

Tomorrow the judge will deliver the verdict on the trial of Aung San Suu Kyi, who is accused of violating the terms of her house arrest by harboring an American who had swum to her house. She had pleaded with him to leave, but he claimed to have been too ill to swim back. Ironically, the trial comes just as her house arrest was about to end. I admire the woman tremendously. I cannot fathom the sacrifices she has had to endure, giving up her own family to stand for justice and freedom. She seems to draw from some super natural inner strength to have lived in isolation all these years. This picture only gives a tiny glimpse of her life. I think about her often, and I hope for the best for her tomorrow. However, I fear it will mean more years of house arrest, if not worse.