Suu Kyi gets Nobel after 21 years

OSLO - Reuters

Myanmar opposition leader Suu Kyi (C) stands beside Thorbjoern Jagland (L), chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee. REUTERS photo

Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi finally received her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo on June 16 after spending 15 years under house arrest, and said her country’s full transformation to democracy was still far off.

“What the Nobel Peace Prize did was to draw me once again into the world of other human beings outside the isolated area in which I lived, to restore a sense of reality to me,” Suu Kyi said as the packed crowd, led by Norway’s King Harald and Queen Sonja, rose in a standing ovation at the ornate Oslo City Hall. “There still remain (political) prisoners in Burma.

It is to be feared that because the best known detainees have been released, the remainder, the unknown ones, will be forgotten,” said Suu Kyi, on her first visit to Europe in nearly a quarter of a century.
Suu Kyi will attend a family reunion in Britain on June 19, with reports that her children Alexander and Kim will attend. She refused to leave Myanmar when her husband was dying because she feared the junta would not let her return.