Aung San Suu Kyi

6/12/12 - Free from house arrest and prison, Aung San Suu Kyi received the award of the Nobel Peace Prize which was awarded to her 21 years ago. Here are two excerpts from her acceptance speech - 

"The peace of our world is indivisible. As long as negative forces are getting the better of positive forces anywhere, we are all at risk. It may be questioned whether all negative forces could ever be removed. The simple answer is: No! It is in human nature to contain both the positive and the negative. However, it is also within human capability to work to reinforce the positive and to minimize or neutralize the negative. Absolute peace in our world is an unattainable goal. But it is one towards which we must continue to journey, our eyes fixed on it as a traveler in a desert fixes his eyes on the one guiding star that will lead him to salvation. Even if we do not achieve perfect peace on earth, because perfect peace is not of this earth, common endeavors to gain peace will unite individuals and nations in trust and friendship and help to make our human community safer and kinder."

"War is not the only arena where peace is done to death. Wherever suffering is ignored, there will be the seeds of conflict, for suffering degrades and embitters and enrages. We are fortunate to be living in an age when social welfare and humanitarian assistance are recognized not only as desirable but necessary. I am fortunate to be living in an age when the fate of prisoners of conscience anywhere has become the concern of peoples everywhere, an age when democracy and human rights are widely, even if not universally, accepted as the birthright of all. ... If I am asked why I am fighting for democracy in Burma, it is because I believe that democratic institutions and practices are necessary for the guarantee of human rights."

7/27/02 - Many of the clothes sold by the store, The Children's Place, are made in Myanmar (Burma), a country whose brutal regime murders, rapes and enslaves its own citizens. The 1991 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Daw Aung Sun Suu Kyi has called on companies to cut ties with the regime. Aung San Suu Kyi is a leader of a nonviolent movement for human rights and democracy in Myanmar. She was under house arrest from 1989 to 1995 --- six years. And she was arrested again in  September 2000 and released in May 2002. She is married and has two children. She is a courageous peace hero who has taken serious risks to rally the citizens of Myanmar to regain their freedoms in a non-violent manner.

Many big-name companies such as Wal-Mart, Value City, Jones Apparel, Ames, JanSport, Kenneth Cole, have pledged not to sell goods from Myanmar. (Information source: iAbolish.com. Also, more info on The Children's Place purchasing matters)

Go to http://www.dassk.com to see a video and hear Aung San Suu Kyi.

Also, go to http://www.ibiblio.org/freeburma/assk/assk.html to hear more of Aung San Suu Kyi.

Go to http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0616-02.htm to read about issues with Unocal and human rights abuses. Burmese Army battalions working for Unocal pipeline project from 1992-95 brutalized villagers into forced or slave labor.