During her long, hard 15 years under house arrest, Aung San Suu Kyi lived alone in a decaying lakeside villa, denied news, medicine, even contact with her children, but sustained by an outside world that revered her as a heroine. Worthy Western institutions showered her with awards and honours, and right-thinking celebrities from George Clooney to Yoko Ono joined the rolling campaign for her release. Suu Kyi’s remarkable one-woman battle to bring democracy to her native Myanmar (formerly Burma), became a global cause célèbre, and when, barely two years ago, she became the country’s first civilian leader in decades, millions rejoiced.
But today, 72-year-old Suu Kyi is an international pariah, her saintly reputation shattered. The same organisations that handed her prizes are scrambling to disassociate themselves from her, and her…
