Burma's Humanitarian Crisis in the Making

Publication Date: June 2006

Publisher: Heritage Foundation (Washington, D.C.)

Author(s): Dana R. Dillon

Research Area: Human rights

Keywords: Asia and the Pacific

Type: Brief

Coverage: Burma

Abstract:

On June 19, Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Burma's democratic opposition, will celebrate her 61st birthday still under house arrest in Rangoon. She has spent well over half of her last 17 birthdays there for the unpardonable sin of winning a landslide victory over Burma's generals in a 1990 election. Her continued indefinite detention and advancing but finite aging are two lines that may ultimately meet, with potentially explosive results.