Barack Obama met with Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi at her home in Myanmar on Monday, lauding her “courage and determination” during an historic visit to the once repressive and secretive country.
The first sitting U.S. president to visit Myanmar, Obama urged its leaders, which have embarked on a series of far-reaching political and economic reforms since 2011, not to extinguish the “flickers of progress that we have seen.”
Obama said that his visit to the lakeside villa where the pro-democracy icon spent years under house arrest marked a new chapter between the two countries.
“Here, through so many difficult years, is where she has displayed such unbreakable courage and determination,” Obama told reporters, while standing side by side with his fellow Nobel peace laureate.
“It is here that she has human freedom and human dignity cannot be denied.”
The country, which is also known as Burma, was ruled by military leaders until early 2011 and for decades was politically and economically cut off from the rest of the world.
Suu Kyi also warned that Burma’s opening up would be difficult.
“The most difficult time in any transition is when we think success is in sight, then we have to be very careful that we are not lured by a mirage of success and that we are working toward its genuine success for our people and friendship between our two countries,” she said.
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