Myanmar frees Suu Kyi

Associated Press

YANGON, Myanmar

Pro-democracy hero Aung San Suu Kyi walked free Saturday after more than seven years under house arrest, welcomed by thousands of cheering supporters outside the decaying lakefront villa that has been her prison.

Her guards effectively announced the end of her detention, pulling back the barbed-wire barriers that sealed off her potholed street and suddenly allowing thousands of expectant supporters to surge toward the house. Many chanted her name as they ran. Some wept.

“I haven’t seen you for a long time,” the 65-year-old Nobel Peace Prize Laureate said to laughter, smiling deeply as she held onto the metal spikes that top the gate. When a supporter handed up a bouquet, she pulled out a flower and wove it into her hair.

Speaking briefly in Burmese, she told the crowd, which quickly swelled to as many as 5,000 people: “If we work in unity, we will achieve our goal.”

Suu Kyi was convicted last year of violating the terms of her previous detention by briefly sheltering an American man who swam uninvited to her lakeside home, extending a period of continuous detention that began in 2003 after her motorcade was ambushed in northern Myanmar by a government-backed mob.

Suu Kyi took up the democracy struggle in 1988. She rode out the military’s bloody suppression of street demonstrations to help found the NLD. Her defiance gained her fame and honor, most notably the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.

In 1989, she was detained on trumped-up national security charges and put under house arrest.