page_title: Aung San Suu Kyi
section_title: Foreign Minister and State Counsellor (2016–present)
hierarchical_section_title: Aung San Suu Kyi / Political career / Foreign Minister and State Counsellor (2016–present)
caption_attribution_description: English: President Rodrigo Roa Duterte prepares to pose for a photo with the heads of state and heads of government who joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)-India Commemorative Summit during the releasing of the Commemorative Stamp at the Taj Diplomatic Enclave Hotel in New Delhi, India on January 25, 2018. Also in the photo are Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and Thailand Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha. KARL NORMAN ALONZO/PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO
context_page_description: Aung San Suu Kyi is a Burmese politician, diplomat, author, and a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate. The first and incumbent State Counsellor of Myanmar, she is also the leader of the National League for Democracy and played a vital role in the state's transition from military junta to partial democracy.
  The youngest daughter of Aung San, Father of the Nation of modern-day Myanmar, and Khin Kyi, Aung San Suu Kyi was born in Rangoon, British Burma. After graduating from the University of Delhi in 1964 and the University of Oxford in 1968, she worked at the United Nations for three years. She married Michael Aris in 1972, with whom she had two children. Aung San Suu Kyi rose to prominence in the 1988 Uprisings, and became the General Secretary of the National League for Democracy, which she had newly formed with the help of several retired army officials who criticized the military junta. In the 1990 elections, NLD won 81% of the seats in Parliament, but the results were nullified, as the military refused to hand over power, resulting in an international outcry. She had, however, already been detained under house arrest before the elections.
context_section_description: As soon as she became foreign minister, she invited Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Canadian Foreign Minister Stephane Dion and Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni in April and Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida in May and discussed to have good diplomatic relationships with these countries.
  Initially, upon accepting the State Counsellor position, she granted amnesty to the students who were arrested for opposing the National Education Bill, and announced a creation of the commission on Rakhine state, which had a long record of persecution of the Muslim Rohingya minority. However, soon Aung San Suu Kyi's government did not manage with the ethnic conflicts in Shan and Kachin states, where thousands of refugees fled to China, and by 2017 the persecution of the Rohingya by the government forces escalated to the point that it is not uncommonly called a genocide. Aung San Suu Kyi, when interviewed, has denied the allegations of ethnic cleansing. She has also refused to grant citizenship to the Rohingya, instead taking steps to issue ID cards for residency but no guarantees of citizenship.
  Her tenure as State Counsellor of Myanmar has drawn international criticism for her failure to address her country's economic and ethnic problems, particularly the plight of the Rohingya following the 25 August 2017 ARSA attacks (described as "certainly one of the biggest refugee crises and cases of ethnic cleansing since the second world war"), for the weakening of freedom of the press and for her style of leadership, described as imperious and "distracted and out of touch".
caption: Aung San Suu Kyi with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, 25 January 2018
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