By IANS,
Oslo: Myanmar’s pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi said here Saturday that receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 had made her feel “real again” and reassured her that her country’s plight had not been forgotten, BBC reported.
Speaking in the Norwegian capital, the Nobel Laureate said the Western support had contributed to changes in Myanmar.
Suu Kyi spent much of the past 24 years under house arrest in Myanmar and was freed in late 2010. She could not travel to collect the prize fearing she would not be allowed back.
Her visit to Oslo is part of a tour of Europe, her first since 1988, which she began in Geneva, at the UN’s International Labour Organisation.
Opening the ceremony in Oslo, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, told Aung San Suu Kyi: “We have been waiting for you for a very long time. However we are well aware that your wait has been infinitely trying for you and one entirely of a different nature from ours.
“In your isolation you have become a moral voice for the whole world.”
Jagland described her as “a precious gift to the world community”.
In her Nobel lecture, Suu Kyi said she heard on the radio that she had received the prize and it had felt “unreal”. But at the same time, it had “opened a door in my heart”.