A biography in French based on the recent and exclusive testimony of witnesses and close friends of the Burmese heroine, winner of the 1991 Nobel Prize, still detained in Burma.
Aung San Suu Kyi: the fine-featured face, the petite silhouette, the name celebrated throughout the world. But who truly knows this 61-year-old Burmese, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, who has become one of the most powerful symbols of the fight against oppression everywhere? Throughout the testimony consisting of anecdotes and conversations often unedited, this book tells the story of the human behind the icon. It also tells the story of an exceptional woman, of her qualities and faults, her strengths and weaknesses, a woman who has never lacked sincerity, generosity or courage.
She was two-year-old in 1947 when her father, Aung San, hero of Burmese independence, was assassinated. She grew up, studied, and married a foreigner, but without ever forgetting her fatherland, which fell in 1962 under the yoke of a military dictatorship. In 1988, just when the nation was bordering on anarchy, she returned to take care of her sick mother. The people sought a leader. They discovered the daughter of Aung San, "a feminine copy of her father". She'd long awaited, without doubt unconsciously, this moment. Many years earlier this mother of two boys had warned her husband, Michael, a British university student: "If one day my compatriots need me, help me to fulfill my duty." At the age of 43, she made the painful choice to sacrifice her family. Inspired by Gandhi and Havel, an adept of a pure form of Buddhism, she practices meditation daily, and she advocates non-violent combat against a military tyranny. The generals, putting her under house arrest, imprison her partisans, reducing to silence those who pronounce her name. Finally deciding to strike a major blow against her movement, in May 2003, they ambushed her escort, beating to death and hurting scores of her followers. She owes her safety to the reflexes of her chauffeur. Since that time, she's been placed once again under house arrest. She lives there with a faithful militant of her party and the daughter of this woman. Her sole links to the outside world, a radio and a doctor authorized to visit her from time to time. The dictators hope that simple weariness will erase "The Lady of Rangoon" from the people's minds and from history. They're fooling themselves, the people still massively support her.
Aung San Suu Kyi, le Jasmin ou la Lune
Aung San Suu Kyi, the Jasmin or the Moon
A biography by
THIERRY FALISE
A foreword by
JANE BIRKIN
Published in French by
Florent Massot in February 2007
and in paperback by J'ai Lu in April 2008