Aung San Suu Kyi released

Myanmar activist Aung San Suu Kyi was released from house arrest Saturday to a throng of thousands of supporters trying to reach out and shake her hand.

“I’m very happy to see you all again,” she told the crowd gathered near her home in Yangon. Ms Suu Kyi appeared on a platform at the gate of her compound, wearing a traditional lilac dress. The crowd chanted, cheered and sang the national anthem.

At party headquarters in the same city, hundreds waited near her National League for Democracy.

The Nobel Peace Prize laureate has spent 15 of the past 21 years under house arrest because of her fight for democracy in the nation formerly known as Burma.

Recently, she had little outside human contact except for two maids and visits from her doctor.

Sometimes, she spoke to supporters over the wall of her compound. Earlier, Ms Suu Kyi’s lawyer Nyan Win warned that she was highly unlikely to accept a conditional release.

He said that if she was freed without conditions, she would meet with the NLD’s central committee, members of the media and the public once she was freed.

She was originally due to be released from house arrest last year, but a case involving an American who swam across Inya Lake to her home, claiming he was on a mission to save her, prompted the latest detention. Last Sunday, the political party supported by the military government won the country’s first election in 20 years.

Ms Suu Kyi will address her supporters at the NLD’s headquarters at noon Saturday, party officials said. (BBC, CNN)