Suu Kyi's fate, and Myanmar's, in the balance after army coup

[ritcha gataga]

After a lifetime struggling against Myanmar's military, 75-year-old Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is back under detention with a junta in power –- although her international image no longer shines.

She swept national elections last November and was preparing to begin another five-year term as the country's de facto leader.

But an early morning army raid and her detention in the capital Naypyidaw has brought her time at the helm to an apparent halt.

Suu Kyi, the daughter of independence hero General Aung San, spent nearly two decades enduring long stretches of house arrest under the former military regime.

Her legacy abroad has been deeply tarnished since the landslide election victory in 2015 that vaulted her National League for Democracy (NLD) to power.

There was global revulsion at a military crackdown two years later that saw around 750,000 members of the stateless Rohingya minority flee burning villages to neighbouring Bangladesh.

Suu Kyi defended the army's conduct and even travelled to The Hague to rebut charges of genocide at the UN's top court.

But she remains immensely popular in Myanmar and is referred to affectionately as "Mother Suu" by supporters, who see her as the best hope for shaking off the country's turbulent past.

- Daughter of independence hero -

Suu Kyi was born on June 19, 1945 in Japanese-occupied Yangon during the final weeks of World War II.

Her father Aung San fought for and against both the British and the Japanese colonisers as he jostled to give his country the best shot at independence.

That goal was achieved in 1948 but Aung San was not around to see it -- he and most of his cabinet had been assassinated just months before.

Suu Kyi spent most of her early years outside of Myanmar, first in India, where her mother was an ambassador, and later at Oxford University, where she met her British husband.

After General Ne Win seized full power in 1962, he forced his own brand of socialism on Myanmar, turning it from Asia's rice bowl into one of the world's poorest and most isolated countries.

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