SETTING FREE THE LADY

AUNG SAN SUU KYI IS RELEASED AFTER SIX YEARS OF HOUSE ARREST. BUT HOW FAR WILL HER FREEDOM GO?

Freedom, as Flannery O'Connor wrote, cannot be conceived simply. Few could understand this better than Aung San Suu Kyi, Burma's chief dissident and winner of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize. Placed under house arrest by a military junta in 1989, Suu Kyi spent six years confined to her family's deteriorating lakeside bungalow in Rangoon. At any time, she was free to join her husband and two children in London -- knowing that the generals would never allow her back. That was a definition of freedom she refused to accept. When the junta abruptly announced last week that Suu Kyi, 50, was...

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