Read the video transcript here arrow up arrow down
The coup is announced on state television: the generals take power.
On February 1st, Myanmar's young democracy is suddenly thrown back.
And with that, her hopeful story also reached a sad low point: Nobel Peace Prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi was arrested.
Andreas Lorenz, former SPIEGEL correspondent
»What a tragedy.
15 years house arrest.
Then the arduous path to success.
And suddenly the military hit her on the knees. "
The population protests and mourns.
"By hitting the pot, we drive away evil - until power is returned to our government."
Aung San Suu Kyi has struggled with the military all her life - now she seems to have lost the fight for the time being.
Who is the woman and what drove her as a politician?
1. The figure of light
This is how Aung San Suu Kyi was adored and loved in the West: upright and proud, with flowers in his hair - not broken even after a total of 15 years of house arrest.
She drew the eyes of the world public to the brutal rule of the generals in Myanmar, received the Nobel Peace Prize and fought until the military opened the country in 2011, after 50 years of dictatorship, and allowed free elections.
Former Asia correspondent Andreas Lorenz met and spoke to Aung San Suu Kyi several times - he was fascinated by her willpower.
Andreas Lorenz, former SPIEGEL correspondent
»What perhaps made her a shining light was her intelligence, her quick-wittedness.
She was and is very charming, very smart and at the same time extremely persistent.
Opponents would say stubborn.
And she had one great quality: she is very brave. "
Aung San Suu Kyi
»If we win and the NLD comes into government, then I'll be above the president.
That's a simple message. "
Her tenacity even brought her to the head of the country as State Councilor in 2015 - she had to come to terms with the generals in the government for the time being.
But the hope for openness, economic success and democratization did not last long.
2. The genocide
When some Rohingya, members of the Muslim minority in Myanmar, attacked police posts in Rakhine State, an old conflict broke out.
The Myanmar soldiers fought back brutally, killing, raping and looting entire villages.
More than 700,000 Rohingya fled across the border into Bangladesh.
A mass exodus following a genocide.
And Aung San Suu Kyi?
Looked away.
Of all people, the woman who had risked her life for democracy now gave way to the generals.
In speeches, she blamed the Rohingya for the escalation.
O-Ton Aung San Suu Kyi
"The terror threat that was the original reason for the events that led to the humanitarian crisis in Rakhine is still real today."
A behavior that can probably best be explained by their dependence on the military.
Suu Kyi's party won the 2015 elections by a huge margin, but according to the constitution, 25 percent of the “people's representatives” are reserved for the military - including the Ministry of Defense.
That meant: Suu Kyi had nothing to say on security issues.
O-Ton Andreas Lorenz, former SPIEGEL correspondent
»I think that she weighed it up and said: What is the lesser evil, so to speak?
I don't want to lose sight of the big goal.
We have all made far too much sacrifice for that.
We have to try to keep the military on our side or not let the thread of the conversation break.
And that's why it could be - as I said, I tend towards this variant - that it risked completely squandering its international reputation.
«
3. The coup
Your big goal - to disempower the military in the long term and to become president yourself - is now a long way off.
After the coup, military propaganda is booming again in the streets of Yangon.
Aung San Suu Kyi was placed under house arrest.
Original sound from Andreas Lorenz, former SPIEGEL correspondent
“She made a mistake.
She has not brought in or trained a successor.
(...) And that is exactly the generals' calculation.
Well, if we condemn her now or just put her under house arrest, then she will be 75 now - maybe the problem will be solved by itself and without her her party is nowhere near as strong and may not have as many supporters as it currently has . "
The figure of light could now have been silenced for the rest of her life.
In the end, did Aung San Suu Kyi choose the wrong path to lead her country to freedom?
Her surroundings were skeptical from an early age:
Original sound from Andreas Lorenz, former SPIEGEL correspondent
“One of them once said: She hovers between heaven and earth like a saint.
They should rather use this status and drive around the world and represent the cause of Burma at congresses and conferences.
Because if, as a saint in quotation marks, she enters the lowlands of everyday politics, then she loses.
And so it seems. "
Aung San Suu Kyi was strong-willed and indomitable all her life.
It seems as if these characteristics of all things have now become her undoing.