peaceful transition
Image via Reuben Teo/Shutterstock.com
The Nobel laureate and human rights advocate Aung San Suu Kyi entered the Myanmar Parliament this week, shortly after her party, the National League for Democracy, won the country's first free election in 25 years.
In those 25 years — since the 1990 election, which the NLD also won — Aung San Suu Kyi spent a total of 15 years without her freedom, having been placed under house arrest by the ruling military government which ignored the election results.
Since 1988, Ms. Suu Kyi has led nonviolent opposition to the military government. Last week’s landslide election results, which took the ruling generals by surprise, demonstrate once again that nonviolence is a force more powerful than violence.
I watched on Al Jazeera television and followed tweets (#Tahrir) from Tahrir (Liberation) Square in Cairo, Egypt as hundreds of thousands of Egyptians awaited a promised speech by President Hosni Mubarak.