The Lady Myanmar’s Generals Can’t Defeat

Let us pause for a moment and imagine ourselves as prisoners. If we were 80 years old, unjustly imprisoned for crimes we never committed, how would we feel?

For decades, Myanmar’s military generals—powerful men armed with soldiers, tanks and weapons—have feared one unarmed woman: Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

Unlike the generals, she holds no weapons. She is thin, frail and carries no more than the flower tucked into her hair. Yet what terrifies the generals is not any physical force but the mandate the people have given her—the authority to govern, the legitimacy conferred through the ballot box.