Suu Kyi to receive Nobel Prize

OSLO

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will formally receive her Nobel Peace Prize two decades after receiving it and will also receive a human rights award in Dublin from rock star Bono during her Europe trip, Agence France-Presse reported.

Switzerland is the first stop on the more than two-week tour taking the veteran activist to Norway, Britain, France and Ireland and which will include a speech in Oslo for her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
Suu Kyi was due to address the International Labour Organization conference in Geneva yesterday.

Switzerland Suu Kyi flies to Oslo, where on June 16 she will make a belated acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize that was awarded to her 21 years earlier while she was detained by the military after leading a pro-democracy party to victory in Myanmar’s 1990 elections, the Associated Press reported.

Also on her itinerary are France and Ireland, where she will be feted by pop band U2 and its activist frontman Bono at a concert hosted by the human rights group Amnesty International. The 66-year-old will address both houses of Britain’s parliament during her visit and accept an honorary doctorate at Oxford. She left behind husband Michael Aris and their two sons, Alexander and Kim, when she traveled to her homeland in 1988 to nurse her ailing mother. Aris died of cancer in 1999, having been denied a visa to Myanmar. Suu Kyi had refused to leave the country, fearing she would be permanently exiled by a junta.

The trip marks a new milestone in the political changes that have swept the country since decades of military rule ended last year. The veteran activist has not visited Europe since 1988 after years spent under house arrest.