Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese pro-democracy leader, will deliver the 2011 BBC Reith Lectures.
Her two lectures will discuss the themes of dissent and liberty and will be broadcast on BBC Radio from 28 June. The lectures are part of a wider series, entitled 'Securing Freedom', reflecting on global events of the past year. Former MI5 Director-General Baroness Manningham-Buller will present three further lectures in September. Aung San Suu Kyi said: "When I was under house arrest, it was the BBC that spoke to me - I listened.
"I am so grateful for this opportunity to exercise my right to human contact by sharing with you my thoughts on what freedom means to me, and others across the world who are still in the sad state of what I would call 'unfreedom'."
I am honoured to share this year's Reith Lectures with Aung San Suu Kyi, whose selfless courage on behalf of Burma's freedom should remind us not to take our own freedoms for granted”
End QuoteEliza Manningham-BullerFormer head of MI5
"These are two very different sides of a familiar story - the struggle for liberty and its defence."
Aung San Suu Kyi's first lecture will examine the notion of dissent, and will draw on her personal experience as a campaigner for democracy. In 1990, Aung San Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy won the Burmese election by a landslide. She then spent 15 of the next 20 years under house arrest, and was finally released on November 13, 2010. The Nobel Peace Prize winner's second lecture will explore the notion of democracy, and the responsibility of the international community towards authoritarian regimes, with reference to recent events in the Middle East. Normally the Reith Lectures are delivered in person in front of a live audience, but due to the exceptional circumstances, Aung San Suu Kyi's lectures were recorded in Burma this week.
The second phase of this year's Reith Lectures will be broadcast in September 2011 to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington DC.
Hong Kong - Nobel Peace laureate and Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi Monday confirmed she plans to travel around Myanmar in the next two months to campaign for political change.
The journey, which she confirmed in an internet broadcast to students in Hong Kong, would be her first outside the capital Yangon since her release from house arrest in November.
Asked about media reports of her intended journey, Suu Kyi told her Hong Kong audience: 'I hope to be able to travel out of Rangoon (Yangon) in a month or two.
'I have not been given any particular assurances by the authorities, but I believe that it is the right of every citizen of Burma to have her security assured by the government.
'Where I shall be going I cannot yet say because we are trying to work out a sensible itinerary. As soon as we have decided on that that, we shall make it public.'
The last time Suu Kyi ventured out into the provinces on the campaign trail in 2003, her vehicles were attacked by pro-government forces and she was arrested.
Suu Kyi spoke for 90 minutes in a live discussion with an audience at the University of Hong Kong.
The event, called A Centenary Dialogue with Aung San Suu Kyi, marks the first time Suu Kyi has accepted an invitation from an Asian university to speak since her release from house arrest.
During the session, Suu Kyi was asked if she had any message to send to Beijing and said she would welcome any dialogue with Chinese officials.
'My message to the Chinese leaders is very simple,' she said. 'China is a great country, the Chinese people are a great people with a marvelous and long history behind them.
'You can afford to take new steps, you can afford to be daring, you can afford to allow room for all kinds of opinion.'
Asked what she would say to those fighting for freedom of speech in China, she said: 'If you are trying to achieve freedom in China, you are not alone.
'There are many people all over the world who are trying to do the same thing and we are all with you.'
Suu Kyi, the daughter of Myanmar independence hero Aung San, was released after being kept under house arrest for about 15 of the previous 20 years by the military junta which ruled from 1962 to 2010.
The 65-year-old leads the country's National League for Democracy party, which was effectively blocked from contesting the November general election, the first in 20 years.
The election, labelled a sham by Western democracies, brought to power a government led by the pro-military Union Solidarity and Development Party, headed by former general Thein Sein.
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