Imagine leading an opposition party to victory, winning the elections, and then never getting to take office. Imagine winning the Nobel Peace Prize and spending the year under house arrest.

Imagine losing your spouse to cancer and not getting to travel to the funeral. Imagine losing the chance to use a telephone or to appear in public.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese opposition leader and a woman of giant conscience, has been fighting for democracy in Burma, her tiny home nation in Southeast Asia.

The price she has paid for more than a decade is to be cut off from her family, her party and from normal daily life and she is held in her home.

Called Myanmar by the military junta that occupies the nation, the tiny nation tucked between China, India, and Thailand has been brutally oppressed by the regime.

Recognized as a Nobel Laureate 10 years ago, Aung San Suu Kyi is once again at the center of Nobel attention. Her Peace Prize Laureate peers gathered in Oslo, Norway to commemorate a century of the Prize and to call for the military government of Burma to free Aung San Suu Kyi. Great peacemakers such as Bishop Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama commended her for her bravery in the face of terror and implored the military regime to free her.

Her peers include Nelson Mandela, Elie Wiesel, Lech Walesa, and Kofi Annan. Rather than capitalizing on her international renown, leaving her home, and depending on her stature to campaign for democracy in Burma, Aung San Suu Kyi opted to stay with her people. Truly, she is the most visible international symbol of political oppression under the military regime.

Despite her house arrest, she remains a force to be reckoned with for the government.

She has reportedly snuck out of arrest to broker deals with the United Nations and the military leaders, securing the release of political prisoners, writers and journalists.

During the eleven years since the National League for Democracy won the elections, the Burmese military regime that refused to sit the popular leaders has grown increasingly elitist. Members of the military regime are among the few who have access to property, power, quality health care, and education for their children. Opposition supporters have been arrested and held for years, denied even basic rights to see their families or communicate with the outside world.

Even after receiving 80 percent of the popular vote, Aung San Suu Kyi and her party remain outsiders in their homeland.

However, most Burmese still want the National League for Democracy to come to power, with Aung San Suu Kyi at the helm.

As the former Nobel Peace Laureates gathered in Oslo, they were conscious of an empty chair, knowing that one among them continued to pay for the high cost of peace. Their appeal to the government of Burma to release Aung San Suu Kyi and the other political prisoners is symbolic, certainly, and in no way forces the military government to stop their human rights abuses.

However, since this year’s Nobel Peace award went to the United Nations, the organization may feel a greater sense of obligation to work for peace. Certainly, Burma does not receive the attention of the Middle East or even Chiapas, but if the U.N. recognizes the absence of one of their own at the table, their involvement in democratic elections, human rights and release of political prisoners may increase.

Burma is an island, isolated by the military’s own mismanagement and regime of oppression. Aung San Suu Kyi is the sole lighthouse, with a beacon shining over her people. Remembrance by the Peace Laureates is a step of faith, but peace still awaits Burma.

Rachel Faber Machacha is a graduate student in international development studies from Emmetsburg.