Hello, I'm Sue Lawley. Thank you for downloading the 2011 Reith Lectures podcast.

For this year's lectures entitled Securing Freedom, the BBC has invited two speakers,

the Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and Eliza Manningham Buller,

the former Director-General of MI5.

In the first of two lectures, recorded in Burma by the BBC,

Aung San Suu Kyi explores the universal aspiration to be free.

Hello and welcome to the radio theatre in Broadcasting House London.

Ansan Suu Kyi personifies the human aspiration for liberty.

By dedicating her life to trying to secure freedom for the people of Burma,

she's become a worldwide symbol of hope.

Today, in the first of two lectures recorded in secret and smuggled out of her country,

she explains the nature of that struggle and its importance,

not only to Burma, but to the world as a whole. Welcome then to the BBC's Reith Lectures.

They're called securing freedom and are being given at a time when the human determination

to win freedom has never been stronger. Taking heart from the struggles of others, the people of

many different countries in the Middle East are seeking to oust the dictatorial regimes that run their

lives. At the same time, the fight against the forces of terrorism, which seek to destroy existing

liberties, goes on. In the first two wreath lectures this year,

Aung San Suu Kyi will be giving a first-hand account

of the fight against tyranny

in a country that's been run by a military dictatorship

for nearly 50 years.

...