A brief light piercing through this week’s usual complement of dreary news: Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been released from more than seven years of house arrest.
House arrest was only the latest of the restrictions levied on Suu Kyi. She was separated from her husband and sons for more than two decades—they lived in Britain and if she visited them there was a good chance that she’d have been refused return to Myanmar. The junta even denied her husband permission to visit her when he was dying eleven years ago.
Of course, you never know with dictatorships whether a decision will be reversed in the next five minutes. And you definitely know that this woman isn’t going to veer from the course she’s held for more than 25 years, resisting the military dictators and working to bring democracy to her country.
So it’s not the beginning of the end. But it’s a lovely end to this week in November to think that she’s able to walk around her neighborhood and share a cup of tea with a friend.
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