Aung San Suu Kyi, the general secretary of the National League for Democracy, the party that won a landslide victory in the Burmese elections of 1990. Placed under her first term of house arrest in 1989, she has spent 12 of the last 18 years a prisoner of the junta. Daughter of the revered independence hero, General Aung San, her appeal among ordinary Burmese remains undimmed. Abroad she has become world’s best known political prisoner and a symbol of human and democratic rights the world over. She is pictured here at her home in Rangoon in August 1996.