Baird meets with Myanmar’s president & Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi
Posted March 8, 2012 5:39 am.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird is personally conferring honorary Canadian citizenship on the Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar.
Baird presented the citizenship certificate to Suu Kyi on a historic visit to the Myanmar house where she has served 15 of the last 23 years under house arrest.
Baird kicked off his visit earlier in the day with a meeting with Myanmar President Thein Sein at his presidential palace, an opulent structure in the country’s new and austere capital of Naypyitaw.
Suu Kyi is an international symbol of elegant, peaceful defiance in a country that has endured decades of oppressive military rule.
She’s running in a significant byelection next month that the world sees as crucial test of Myanmar’s new civilian leadership.
Her National League for Democracy won a landslide electoral victory in 1990 but was barred by the military from forming a government.
