"They call Aung San Suu Kyi "The Lady". Ordinary Burmese regard her with a reverence that the regime has never been able to reduce, despite regularly denouncing her — although rarely by name — as a tool of foreign powers. Instead, seeing a foreigner on the streets of Rangoon, people will discreetly approach, whisper "I like The Lady", and move on before they are seen holding a conversation. Miss Suu Kyi, 62, is the daughter of Aung San, Burma's assassinated independence hero, and grew up in Burma and India. She spent many years living as a housewife in Oxford, where Michael Aris, her husband, was a university don, until returning to Burma in 1988, where she co- founded the National League for Democracy. Two years later it won elections by a landslide, but has never been allowed to take power. She is the world's only detained Nobel peace prize laureate, having spent 12 of the last 17 years in various forms of custody, but has always insisted on non-violence as the way to "freedom from fear", the title of one of her books. "It is not power that corrupts but fear," she said. "Fear of losing power corrupts those who wield it and fear of the scourge of power corrupts those subject to it."
One of the greatest assets the Burmese people have going for them is this lady. She is a visable, personified icon of freedom that people will identify with. She doesn't even have to really do anything but exist at this point, but everyone knows who she is, and where she is, and the army can't do anything about it.