• Listen to this segment

• Listen to the entire program

Burmese opposition leader and longtime democracy advocate, Aung San Suu Kyi, is currently touring Europe, two years after her release from house arrest in Burma. Suu Kyi’s release and world tour is part of Burma’s progress from dictatorship to democracy that began in 2010.

In the wake of her travel, Thein Sein, Burma’s president, announced Tuesday that he plans to implement a “second wave of reforms” throughout the nation focusing on economic growth. Sein hopes to attract foreign investment, improve infrastructure and reduce the state’s role in the sectors of energy, finance, health care, education, and more.

Aung Sun Suu Kyi was elected Prime Minister while under house arrest in 1990 – she remained in detention for 15 years while a military junta ruled the nation with an iron fist, until November 2010. As part of the transition to democracy, Su Kyi advocates caution toward Western investment. On Saturday in Norway, she delivered her long-delayed acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize awarded 21 years ago. She encouraged “cautious optimism,” stating, “I do not want to encourage blind faith” in economic reform. She emphasized the importance of labor standards and environmental responsibility for investors, while encouraging investment that profits not just foreign investors, but also the Burmese people.

During her Nobel acceptance speech, Suu Kyi also called attention to political prisoners still incarcerated in her country. However, a government minister announced that President Thein Sein will release the 470 remaining Burmese political prisoners next month. Despite Burma’s recent political and economic reforms, neither Thein Sein nor Suu Kyi has addressed to any great extent the violence and persecution directed at ethnic minorities in the country. In the past two weeks, violence between Burmese Buddhists and the Rohingya, an ethnic Muslim minority, has taken the lives of at least 50 people in Rakhine State.

GUEST: Edith Mirante, human rights activist, director of Project Maje, author of Burmese Looking Glass, and Down the Rat Hole: Adventures Underground on Burma’s Frontiers

To read Aung San Suu Kyi’s acceptance speech, click here.

Visit www.projectmaje.org for more information about Mirante’s work.