Aung San Suu Kyi Quotes
All repressive laws must be revoked, and laws introduced to protect the rights of the people.
Suu Kyi, Aung San. Freedom from Fear and Other Writings. Penguin Books, 1991, p. 175.
Note the use of the phrase “against the government.” One of the unique aspects of the American Constitution and The Bill of Rights is that the government is considered a potential and even probable infringer on the liberties of the people. It is almost as though the government was the potential enemy. Modern libertarians state this very explicitly and it is ever present in the views of both the right and left wings of American politics. Most centrists recoil at the thought that some citizens see the government as the enemy, but even in America there have been times where the government has infringed on the rights of citizens only to have the courts or future administrations and Congresses correct the error.
Jefferson and some of the other Founding Fathers saw the American experiment as having implications for the whole world. To Jefferson, the Declaration of Independence was not just for Americans but ideally for all mankind.
It is ironic that Pakistan, the creation of Jinnah’s efforts, has to a great extent adopted Sharia (Islamic Law) resulting in severe curtailment of freedom of speech and thought. Professors languish in jail for not teaching the history of Muhammed in the orthodox way, people are sentenced to death for what the local mullahs regard as blasphemy—results which from Jinnah’s point of view were terrible.
Aung San Suu Kyi is a Burmese politician, diplomat, author, and a 1991 Nobel Peace Prize laureate who served as State Counsellor of Myanmar (equivalent to a prime minister) and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 2016 to 2021. She has served as the president of the National League for Democracy (NLD) since 2011, having been the General Secretary from 1988 to 2011. She played a vital role in Myanmar's transition from military junta to partial democracy in the 2010s.
