Aung San Suu Kyi

Born in 1945 to Aung San, the father of modern Myanmar, she studied at Oxford and worked at the UN before the 8888 Uprising in August 1988 pulled her into politics. She co-founded the National League for Democracy, which won 81% of seats in 1990 - results the junta nullified, locking her under house arrest for nearly 15 of the next 21 years. She survived an assassination attempt in 2003 that killed at least 70 NLD members. Her party's 2015 landslide made her State Counsellor in 2016, barred from the presidency because her late husband and children held foreign citizenship. As de facto leader she drew condemnation for ignoring the Rohingya genocide, jailing journalists, and appearing at The Hague in 2019 to defend the military against massacre allegations. After her party won again in November 2020, the Tatmadaw staged a coup on 1 February 2021, arrested her, and by December 2022 had convicted her on corruption and other charges - 27 years in prison, which the UN and Western governments call politically motivated.