Aung San Suu Kyi will lead Burma’s main opposition party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), into Sunday’s poll with high hopes for a formidable electoral showing.
The NLD chairwoman, who much to the chagrin of her legion of supporters remains constitutionally barred from assuming the country’s highest office, is recontesting the Lower House seat of Kawhmu Township in the southwest of Rangoon Division.
The daughter of renowned independence hero Gen Aung San, Suu Kyi has negotiated the highs and lows of public life under a notorious military regime—from long periods of house arrest, including during general elections in 1990 and 2010, to a violent attack on her motorcade by regime-backed thugs at Depayin in 2003.
In 1991, Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, an honor she was finally able to accept in person in Oslo in June 2012, just two months after winning a seat in Burma’s Parliament, alongside over 40 of her NLD colleagues, in an April by-election.
Here, The Irrawaddy brings together a selection of photos that highlight a few key meetings and moments in Suu Kyi’s political life over the last 25 years, from a recent meeting with the Chinese president in Beijing to a visit to the site of a controversial copper mine in Sagaing Division in 2013.
