Mizzima News

New Delhi (Mizzima) - Hundreds of students of Delhi University’s Lady Shri Ram College for Women on Friday ran a distance of 3. 3 kilometres in a campaign to demand the release of detained former LSR student and Burmese democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.

The pro-democracy leader and Nobel Peace Laureate, recently sentenced to another 18 months in detention in Burma, is a former student of Lady Shri Ram College for Women in India’s capital, New Delhi.

Dr. Meenakshi Gopinath said the race was organized as a campaign to promote awareness on the struggle for freedom in Burma from military dictatorship and for the release of Aung San Suu Kyi.

“Aung San Suu Kyi or ‘Suu’ as we used to call her in college is a symbol of courage and inspiration for us… and we condemn her being sentenced to another 18 months in detention,” Dr. Gopinath told Mizzima.

Aung San Suu Kyi, daughter of Burma’s Independence architect General Aung San, was a student of Lady Shri Ram College in 1964. She came to New Delhi with her mother Daw Khin Kyi, who was appointed ambassador to India, in 1960.

The democracy icon has been detained for 14 of the past 19 years and was sentenced on August 11 to another term of detention of 18 months after being charged with violating her previous detention rules by accepting an American man at her lakeside home.

The race on Friday in New Delhi was one of the myriad activities across the world organised by Aung San Suu Kyi’s supporters to promote awareness regarding her detention. Her latest incarceration has galvanized activists across the world to organize protests rallies and other demonstrations in various towns and cities.