Few countries have ever been so closely associated with a single politician as Myanmar, whose public “face,” for many decades, was the brave and brilliant dissident Aung San Suu Kyi. I remember her appearance - via a prerecorded videocassette, smuggled out of the country - at the international women’s conference in Beijing in 1995. Aung San Suu Kyi had just been released from house arrest, but her speech was not about Myanmar, also known as Myanmar. Instead she used language designed to appeal to a surreally diverse audience, ranging from Indian activists and German feminists to Saudi women in abayas.
Anne Applebaum: A familiar fall from the pedestal
