| Suu Kyi makes history with UK parliament address |
LONDON Myanmar democracy champion Aung San Suu Kyi became the first non-head of state to address both houses of Britain’s parliament on Thursday in a rare honour she used to ask for help in bringing democracy to the former British colony.
Cutting a tiny figure in parliament’s cavernous and historic Westminster Hall, the 67-year-old Nobel Peace laureate and opposition leader received a standing ovation on arrival, introduced as “the conscience of a country and a heroine for humanity”.
“We have an opportunity to reestablish true democracy in Burma. It is an opportunity for which we have waited decades,” she told a forum previously reserved for world leaders such as Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama.
“If we do not get things right this time right round, it may be several decades more before a similar opportunity arises again. I would ask Britain, as one of the oldest parliamentary democracies, to consider what it can do to help build the sound institutions needed to build a nascent parliamentary democracy.”
Suu Kyi, only the second woman to address both houses of parliament after Queen Elizabeth, is in Britain as part of a 17-day tour of Europe that has at times been emotional and physically demanding.
On Wednesday, she returned to Oxford, where she once lived with her late husband and two sons before returning to Myanmar, also known as Burma, in 1988.
Reuters
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