Yangon — On this day in 1991, then opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, while under house arrest, was awarded the Nobel peace prize.
The same day, students at Yangon University [then Rangoon University] staged a protest calling for her release to celebrate her winning the prestigious prize. Students also called on the military regime to honor the results of the 1990 general election, which Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy won by a landslide.
Students also called on the regime to step down, release detained students and grant students full rights.
The student action is known as the 10-D movement as it took place on December 10 while the military regime was repressing dissidents.
The regime, which was scrambling to react to the Nobel prize, carried out a brutal crackdown on student protests. It temporarily closed schools and arrested student protestors at their dormitories and homes. Over 400 students were arrested and more than 100 were given prison sentences, with most receiving long-term imprisonment.
Daw Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest on and off until 2010. She was finally able to accept the peace prize in person in Oslo in 2012.
Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko
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