Media outlets around the world are reporting that Aung Sun Suu Kyi has won a by-election, which means she will soon sit in Burma's parliament. She ran in the Kawhmu Township.

Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize–winning democracy activist, spent approximately 15 years in prison or under house arrest until she was released in November 2010.

The party she headed for years, the National League for Democracy, won a resounding victory in the 1990 election, but the results were nullified by Burmese generals.

The junta viciously repressed a 2007 uprising, and disbanded the party in 2010 after it failed to register for elections that year.

Last year, its application to run candidates was approved, leading to Suu Kyi's decision to run.

She has always advocated nonviolence with along the lines of Buddhist principles.

“She is communicating a message that the only hope that we have for our survival is through the ability to learn the power to talk to each other,” Vancouver author Alan Clements, a friend of Suu Kyi, told the Straight in 2010. “It's not a new idea, but she is manifesting it in the worst of conditions. She is asking the generals for dialogue and asking tyrants to reconcile their differences and to move forward in what she calls a 'hand-in-hand' approach.”