The Nobel Peace Prize laureate was once the darling of foreign diplomats, with legions of starry-eyed supporters at home and a reputation for redeeming Myanmar from a history of iron-fisted martial rule.
Her followers swept a landslide victory in Myanmar’s last elections in 2020 but the military voided the vote, dissolved her National League for Democracy (NLD) party and has jailed her in total seclusion.
As she disappeared and a decade-long democratic experiment was halted, activists rose up – first as street protesters and then as guerilla rebels battling the military in an all-consuming civil war.
The octogenarian – known in Myanmar as “The Lady” and famed for wearing flowers in her hair – is set to remain under lock and key as her junta jailers hold polls starting Sunday to overwrite the 2020 vote.
Suu Kyi’s reputation abroad is heavily tarnished over her government’s handling of the Rohingya crisis.
But for her many followers in Myanmar her name is still a byword for democracy, her absence on the ballot an indictment it will be neither free nor fair.
Accidental icon
Suu Kyi has spent around two decades of her life in military detention – but in a striking contradiction, she is the daughter of the founder of Myanmar’s armed forces.
She was born on June 19, 1945, in Japanese-occupied Yangon during the final weeks of World War II.
Her father, Aung San, fought for and against both the British and the Japanese colonisers as he sought to secure independence for his country.
He was assassinated in 1947, months before the goal was achieved, and Suu Kyi spent most of her early years outside Myanmar – first in India, where her mother was an ambassador, and later at Oxford University, where she met her British husband.
After General Ne Win seized full power in 1962, he forced his brand of socialism on Myanmar, turning what was once Asia’s rice bowl into one of the world’s poorest and most isolated countries.
Suu Kyi’s elevation to a champion of democracy happened almost by accident when she returned home in 1988 to nurse her dying mother.
Soon afterwards, at least 3,000 people were killed when the military crushed protests against its authoritarian rule – a catalyst moment for Suu Kyi.
A charismatic orator, the then-43-year-old found herself helming a burgeoning democracy movement, but was put under house arrest in 1989.
Her NLD nonetheless surged to a landslide election victory in 1990. But the generals were not prepared to give up power.
Suu Kyi spent around 15 of the following 20 years in detention, largely at her Yangon home where she often roused crowds with speeches over her boundary wall.
The junta offered to end her imprisonment at any time if she left the country permanently, but Suu Kyi refused and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize while detained in 1991.
Her campaign took a heavy toll – she missed her husband’s death from cancer in 1999 and much of her two sons’ childhoods.
Rank and file
The military eventually granted her freedom in 2010, just days after elections her party boycotted, but which brought in a nominally civilian government. She became an MP in a 2012 by-election.
Her movement swept the next poll three years later prompting jubilant celebrations by massive crowds, a flurry of visits from long-absent foreign leaders and a striking mood of public optimism.
But there was global revulsion at a 2017 army crackdown that forced roughly 750,000 members of the Rohingya minority to flee to neighbouring Bangladesh.
Her government appeared in lockstep with the military – denying claims the Rohingya suffered rape, extrajudicial killings and arson attacks.
Suu Kyi travelled to The Hague to rebut charges of genocide against them at the UN’s top court in 2019 – tanking her reputation on the international circuit.
But her relationship with the powerful military establishment remained fraught and they snatched back power after the 2020 vote, claiming fraud had marred the poll.