Suu Kyi receives Nobel Peace Prize 21 years late

(June 18, 2012) Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi finally received her 1991 Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway, on Saturday after spending 15 years under house arrest, and said her country's full transformation to democracy was still far off. "What the Nobel Peace Prize did was to draw me once again into the world of other human beings outside the isolated area in which I lived, to restore a sense of reality to me," Suu Kyi said as the packed crowd, led by Norway's King Harald and Queen Sonja, rose in a standing ovation at the ornate Oslo City Hall. The 66-year old democracy leader of Myanmar, formerly Burma, said much remained to be resolved in her country. Hostilities have not ceased in the far north; to the west, communal violence resulting in arson and murder were taking place just several days before she started her first visit to Europe in nearly a quarter of a century. There still remain political prisoners in Myanmar, formerly Burma, she said noting the best known detainees have been released, but the remainder, the unknown ones, will be forgotten. Suu Kyi who spent much of the past 24 years under house arrest, was freed in late 2010. She won a seat in Myanmar’s parliament in a by-election two months ago, but she is touring Europe on a personal basis.