Zeenews Bureau
Dublin: Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi will on Monday arrive in the Republic of Ireland from Norway for a six-hour visit.
The Nobel Peace Prize laureate will deliver an open-air address and receive the Freedom of Dublin City award, 12 years after she was given the honour.
She is also scheduled to appear alongside U2 singer Bono, her most high-profile Irish backer, at the Dublin event.
On Sunday, Suu Kyi paid a jubilant visit to the Norwegian city of Bergen, where she urged refugees from her ethnically divided homeland to build harmony and support ceasefires.
She met leaders of a Bergen-based group that offered her early support, the Rafto Foundation for Human Rights, which awarded her its highest prize in 1990. As with her Nobel, she couldn`t personally claim her prize at the time because Myanmar`s dictatorship had placed her under house arrest.
Myanmar`s rulers first imprisoned Suu Kyi in 1989, the year before her National League for Democracy swept to victory in national elections. The government annulled that result and kept Suu Kyi under house arrest for most of the next 21 years, freeing her in 2010 following the country`s first elections in two decades.
Suu Kyi`s party boycotted that election but has pursued reconciliation with the military-backed government of President Thein Sein formed as a result of that vote. Last month Suu Kyi led her party into Myanmar`s national assembly as the opposition for the first time.
She launched her European tour after receiving assurances from the government that she could travel freely without risk of being blocked from returning home, her longstanding fear. She has already visited Switzerland and, after Ireland, will spend several days in England, then finish in France.
(With Agency inputs)
