Part 2: Section 9 Summary

This section is from the speech Aung San Suu Kyi delivered to a mass rally at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Rangoon on 26 August 1988. This is the only one of the approximately one thousand speeches she delivered between August and July of the next year for which she formally prepared. The purpose of this rally is draw world attention to the collective will of the Burmese people. She complimented the nation's students for having spearheaded this effort, sometimes at the cost of their lives. She asked her listeners to observe a minute's silence in honor of their fallen, then noting that it is the "unshakable desire to strive for a multi-party democratic system" that has brought them together today—and that the ongoing "national crisis could be likened to the second struggle for national independence." She stressed that it must be...