Aung San Suu Kyi makes bullies of Myanmar tremble.

The following editorial appeared in the Miami Herald on Tuesday, Sept. 30:

X X X

She is a small, slender woman, weighing just over 100 pounds. Her speeches, when she is free to give them, are an appeal to reason rather than political broadsides. She has been an unflagging advocate of nonviolence all her life. Why, then, are the military rulers who run Myanmar, formerly Burma, so afraid of Aung San Suu Kyi?

Maybe it's because they know that she represents the vast majority of Myanmar's people, given that her party won 82 percent of the vote in 1990 before the military seized power. Or maybe it's because, as with all bullies, they fear nothing more than someone who refuses to be intimidated. Like Nelson Mandela before her, Aung San Suu Kyi has become an international symbol of heroic resistance to despotism, and that, apparently, is what Myanmar's rulers find terrifying.

Freed in May of 2002 after 19 months of house arrest, she was rearrested last May following a violent incident provoked by a pro-junta gang. The government shut down the offices of her political party and detained her at a ...