Burma’s Aung San Suu Kyi Formally Accepts Nobel Peace Prize 21 Years Later
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State Department(NEW YORK) — Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi formally accepted her Nobel Peace Prize today, more than two decades after it was awarded to honor her fight for democracy.
“We have been waiting for you for a very long time,” Nobel Committee Chairman Thorbjorn Jagland told Suu Kyi. “In your isolation, you have become a moral leader for the whole world.”
Suu Kyi won the award in 1991 but for more than 20 years was either forbidden from leaving her country, or too afraid she would never be allowed to return. Saturday, as a free woman and member of parliament in a newly open Burma (now called Myanmar), she finally gave her acceptance speech.
“When the Nobel Committee chose to honor me, the road I had chosen…became a less lonely path to follow,” Suu Kyi said. “The Nobel Peace Prize opened up a door in my heart.”
It was a remarkable moment.
A woman who had lived a difficult and lonely life as a prisoner of conscience was met by trumpet fanfare and an adoring crowd of dignitaries in Oslo’s Town Hall, who gave her a pair of long standing ovations.
A Burmese musician played her favorite piece, the same one played here 22 years ago, when an empty chair marked Suu Kyi’s absence.
Saturday, she spoke of her years under house arrest, when “it felt as though I were no longer part of the real world.” What the Nobel award had done, she said, was send an unmistakable message, to her supporters and to the Burmese regime. “The Nobel Prize had drawn the attention of the world,” she said. “We were not going to be forgotten.”
She knows that challenges remain–for her country, and for human rights the world over. “I am standing here because I was once a prisoner of conscience,” she said. “Please remember the often repeated truth that one prisoner of conscience is too many.” Like Mandela, for all her struggles, she has no appetite for revenge. “What I want most,” she said on her arrival in Europe Thursday, “is reconciliation and not retribution.”
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