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Summary
Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi reached out to Myanmar's splintered opposition forces on Sunday as she addressed thousands of exuberant supporters following her release from years of house arrest. I want to hear the voice of the people, after that we will decide what we want to do, she told a sea of followers outside her party headquarters. I want to work with all democratic forces. I believe in human rights and I believe in the rule of law, she added. The daughter of Myanmar's independence hero carries a weight of expectation among her supporters for a better future for the nation after almost half a century of military dictatorship. The Nobel Peace Prize winner was freed on Saturday after spending most of the last two decades locked up, in a move greeted with jubilation by her followers and welcomed by rights groups and governments around the world. But it remains to be seen whether the most famous dissident in Myanmar, formerly known as Burma, can live up to her long-suffering compatriots' high expectations. A huge crowd gathered outside the headquarters of Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy for the speech and television pictures showed her struggling to make her way through the throngs. Thousands of her supporters had roared with approval on Saturday as Suu Kyi appeared for the first time outside her lakeside home after the end of her latest seven-year stretch of detention. Attention is focused on whether she can reunite the divided opposition after an election widely criticised by the West as a sham to prolong military rule behind a facade of democracy.
