Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has delivered the BBC’s annual Reith Lecture, speaking to an international radio audience via recordings smuggled out of the country.
In Tuesday’s lecture the Nobel laureate drew parallels between the uprisings shaking the Arab world and her country’s failed revolt against its military rulers.
Ms. Suu Kyi says that people in Myanmar, also known as Burma, look to the Arab world with envy. Myanmar’s own pro-democracy rising was crushed in 1988.
ADVERTISEMENT
In a question-and-answer session following the broadcast, Ms. Suu Kyi said that Myanmar’s democracy movement stalled because it didn’t benefit from the information revolution and because, unlike in Egypt or Tunisia, the army opened fire on the people.