Daw Aung San Suu Kyi

Britain's Finance Minister, Gordon Brown, has called Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi a true hero for our times.

In an extract from his new book, "Courage: Eight Portraits," published in the Guardian newspaper Monday, Brown says the Nobel laureate's struggle since her arrest in 1989 is the absolute expression of selflessness.

Brown writes that Aung San Suu Kyi represents the power of the powerless -- a woman, a prisoner of conscience up against a state with one of the worst human rights records in the world.

The head of the National League for Democracy, Aung San Suu Kyi has spent most of the past 17 years under house arrest.

Human Rights Watch says the Burmese government holds more than one thousand known political prisoners in prisons and labor camps across the country.

information for this report is provided by AFP.