AI Index: ASA 16/12/91

Distr: SC/PO

NOTE TO EDITORS

@AUNG SAN SUU KYI

PRISONER OF CONSCIENCE, NOBEL PEACE PRIZE WINNER

Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of the National League for Democracy in

Myanmar, is being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Norway today (10

December 1991). Now in her second year under house arrest in Myanmar,

the award will be accepted by her family.

Amnesty International has considered her a prisoner of conscience

since she was placed under house arrest by the ruling military

authorities in 1989 -- she has been featured in a major campaign on

human rights violations in Myanmar that started last November and her

case is highlighted this year during the organization's 30th

anniversary.

The following is a brief update on Aung San Suu Kyi's political

activities and detention:

________________________________________________________________________

Aung San Suu Kyi is detained under the administrative detention

provisions of the 1975 State Protection Law, which concerns supposed

threats to state security. She has been held under house arrest for two

years.

The party which she helped to create, the National League for

Democracy (NLD), has reportedly been pressured by the military

government into removing her from its leadership. In late March U Lwin

and Aung Shwe replaced Aung San Suu Kyi and Tin U, who is serving a

three year prison sentence, as General Secretary and Chairman of the NLD

respectively.

In recent months Aung San Suu Kyi has been under constant pressure

from the authorities to leave the country as a condition of her freedom.

She has reportedly agreed to this, provided four conditions are met:

1. All political prisoners are released

2. Power is transferred from the military to the elected

civilian government

3. She is allowed 50 minutes' air time on Burmese television

and radio

4. She is allowed to walk to the airport

Aung San Suu Kyi returned to Burma in 1988 to look after her dying

mother, and soon became involved in the democracy movement. She formed

the NLD with retired General Tin U in September 1988; Aung San Suu Kyi

once described her party's campaign as "no more violent than is

necessary in banging the keys of a typewriter".

She is detained at her home in Yangon (Rangoon) in complete

isolation from her family and the outside world. Recently General Saw

Maung said that she would never lead Burma because she is married to a

foreigner (Dr Michael Aris, a fellow of St. Anthony's College, Oxford

University, in the United Kingdom). All family visits are denied, and

her two sons have been stripped of their Burmese citizenship.

In August the ruling State Law and Order Restoration Council

(SLORC) amended the 1975 State Protection Law to extend the time people

can be detained without trial from three years to five years. As Aung

San Suu Kyi is held under the administrative detention provisions of

this law, this means that she can now be detained for five years without

trial.

In January Aung San Suu Kyi was awarded the European Parliament's

human rights award, the Sakharov Prize, and in November last year she

was awarded the Rafto Human Rights Prize in Norway. On 6 September,

United Nations Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar appealed to the

SLORC for her release.

An honorary fellow of St Hugh's College, Oxford University, Aung

San Suu Kyi is a doctoral candidate in Burmese literature at London

University's School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). Aung San Suu

Kyi received a degree in Politics, Philosophy, and Economics from St

Hugh's College, Oxford, and she and her family lived in Oxford from 1975

until 1988. She is the author of a biography of her father as well as a

book entitled Burma and India: Some Aspects of Intellectual Life Under

Colonialism.