Within minutes after Myanmar's military rulers authorized her release, thousands of jubilant supporters stormed her lakeside compound singing the national anthem, as the smiling Suu Kyi appeared at her gate in traditional dress wearing a flower in her hair.
The 65-year-old Suu Kyi is one of more than 2,000 political prisoners of the junta, which risked her release only because it had swept a sham election the week before.
Suu Kyi was barred from running in the election.
Her latest detention began on May 2003. She has been jailed or under house arrest for more than 15 of the last 21 years.
President Obama issued this statement on her release:
"Whether Aung San Suu Kyi is living in the prison of her house, or the prison of her country, does not change the fact that she, and the political opposition she represents, has been systematically silenced, incarcerated, and deprived of any opportunity to engage in political processes."Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party overwhelmingly won the last democratic elections in 1990, but the military refused to hand over power, and instead clamped down on Suu Kyi's party.
Her release is seen as deflecting criticism of the junta for its continued imprisonment of political dissenters, its brutal military regime, and its campaigns against ethnic minorities.
Suu Kyi has been a leader in the struggle for democracy in Myanmar since 1988, when she returned home to take care of her ailing mother just as her country exploded in protest against 25 years of military rule.
Because she was the daughter of Aung San, who led Myanmar to independence from Britain before he was assassinated by his rivals, she was thrust into a leadership role.
In 1989, the country's military rulers, threatened by the popularity of the charismatic, tireless and outspoken Suu Kyi, put her under house arrest, where they kept her until 1995. She has spent various periods in detention since then.
Her defiance of the bloody military regime in Myanmar earned her the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize.
When her late husband, British scholar Michael Aris, who raised their sons in England, died of cancer in 1999, he hadn't been allowed to visit his wife for three years.
Suu Kyi has stayed in Myanmar because she fears that if she leaves, she will not be allowed to return.
The article from AP.
