Yangon, Myanmar:
Myanmar's military government freed its arch rival, democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, on Saturday after her latest term of detention expired. Several thousand jubilant supporters streamed to her residence.
A smiling Suu Kyi, wearing a traditional jacket, appeared at the gate of her compound as the crowd chanted, cheered and sang the national anthem. (
Read: Who is Aung San Suu Kyi?)
"We have not seen each other for a long time. There are so many things to talk about. If you all want to listen, please come to the office [of the National League for Democracy] at 12:00 pm tomorrow," said Suu Kyi as she addressed the crowd in front of her lakeside compound.
The 65-year-old Noble Peace Prize laureate, whose latest period of detention spanned seven and a half years, has come to symbolise the struggle for democracy in the Southeast Asian nation ruled by the military since 1962.
The release from house arrest of one of the world's most prominent political prisoners came a week after an election that was swept by the military's proxy political party and decried by Western nations as a sham designed to perpetuate authoritarian control.
Leaders from across the world are hailing her release. US President Barack Obama, currently in Japan, called Suu Kyi a "hero of mine". (
Read: Obama welcomes Suu Kyi's release)
Britain's Prime Minister David Cameron welcomed the release of Myanmar's pro-democracy leader saying it was "a travesty" and long overdue. Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown too expressed his happiness.
Supporters had been waiting most of the day near her residence and the headquarters of her political party. Suu Kyi has been jailed or under house arrest for more than 15 of the last 21 years.
Her party boycotted the country's first election in 20 years, held on November 7, saying the rules were unfair. The move left the opposition bitterly divided and attention is now on whether Suu Kyi can unite it again.
Suu Kyi had swept the National League for Democracy (NLD) to a landslide election win in 1990, wooing crowds with her charisma and eloquent speeches calling for peaceful change, but the regime never accepted the result.
Suu Kyi has been largely cut off from the outside world, with no telephone or Internet access and just two female aides for company, apart from occasional visits from her doctor and lawyer.
When the softly-spoken but indomitable opposition leader was last released in 2002 she drew huge crowds wherever she went -- a reminder that years of detention had not dimmed her immense popularity.
Oxford-educated Suu Kyi entered Myanmar's political arena at a relatively late stage, after spending much of her life abroad in India and then Britain, but politics was always in her blood. The daughter of Myanmar's liberation hero General Aung San, who was assassinated in 1947, she returned to Yangon in 1988 to nurse her sick mother, as protests erupted against the military and were brutally crushed. She was quick to take on a leading role in the pro-democracy movement, petitioning the government to prepare for elections and delivering speeches to hundreds of thousands of people at the city's glittering Shwedagon Pagoda. Alarmed by the support she commanded, the generals ordered her first stint of house arrest in 1989. Her most recent stretch of forced isolation began in May 2003 after a deadly attack on her convoy by supporters of the junta.
Her many years in detention have seen her live a spartan existence of early meditation, spy novels and rare chocolate treats -- said to be her only "vice" by diplomats who have been in contact with her. Her struggle for her country has also come at a high personal cost: her husband, British academic Michael Aris, died in 1999, and in the final stages of his battle with cancer the junta refused him a visa to see his wife.
Suu Kyi refused to leave Myanmar to see him, certain she would never have been allowed to return. She has not seen her two sons for about a decade and has never met her grandchildren.