Burma: The Lady Walks Free Again

Burma: The Lady Walks Free Again

In a tragic place scented by tropical blooms, it was the simplest of gestures. On Nov. 13, as Aung San Suu Kyi peered out of the crumbling villa complex where she has been confined for much of the past two decades, one of the thousands of well-wishers gathered to mark her moment of freedom handed her a nosegay of flowers. Smiling, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate received the fragrant benediction and tucked the blossoms in her hair. “We haven’t seen each other for so long. I have so much to tell you,” Suu Kyi said to her supporters, with an understatement that belied the seven years of house arrest she had endured in her most recent stint at the hands of Burma’s military regime. “We have a lot of things to do.”

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