Finalist
Christian Holst
Reportage by Getty Images
"Half a Century Without Freedom - Life under the Military Regime of Burma"
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Aung San Suu Kyi was released from an almost 8-year-long house arrest in November 2010 but her future is a difficult one.
While Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Price Laureate, is undeniably a source of great hope to the Burmese people it is uncertain how much real power and how much opportunity for change the harsh military junta of Burma will let her have.
Her approach so far has been to reach out, to try to reconcile with the junta while at the same time trying to honor what she believes is expected of her – to speak out on behalf of the population and to address the hardships of her country and its people.
She knows that the latter may get her arrested at any time.
"I want to do as much as I can while I'm free," she recently said to TIME magazine. "I don't want to tire myself out, but we never know how much time we have."
But it is not just the risk of yet another incarceration that worries her followers.
In the past, Aung San Suu Kyi and her followers have been brutally attacked and harassed by government-sponsored thugs. In May 2003, a convoy of Aung San Suu Kyi, NLD members and supporters were ambushed and attacked in a village in Central Burma in what has become known as The Depayin Massacre. According to eyewitnesses, up to 70 people got beaten to death and for three months no one knew what had happened to Suu Kyi. It later turned out that she had been secretly jailed – the junta said “to protect her from people out to harm her”. There was never any convictions made and no culprits were ever charged.
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