Pro-democracy movement in Burma

The pro-democracy movement in Burma began in opposition to Ne Win’s military regime in the 1980s. Although Burma had a functioning parliamentary democracy by the late 1950s, internal divisions at the top of the leadership brought about instability that allowed Ne Win to seize power in a military coup in 1962. A series of protests and escalating violence led to Ne Win’s resignation and replacement by Saw Maung in 1988. With martial law imposed and order restored, the country held a multiparty election in May 1990, in which the National League for Democracy led by Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide victory. The military regime refused to transfer power to the NLD, however, and kept Suu Kyi under house arrest, where she had been since the previous year.

Suu Kyi had become a prominent leading figure in the movement due to her winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 and being continually subjected to intermittent house arrests by the government in Myanmar (which is its official name for the country). She has had considerable degree of contact with Western governments, which have continued to advocate for her release and place sanctions on Burma.