daughter of the beloved Aung San, witnessed the carnage at the hands of the Tatmadaw and quickly rose to the forefront of the democracy movement, becoming an icon of hope for the Burmese and establishing the National League for Democracy (NLD). Furthermore, the protests brought about the dissolution of the BSPP and the resignation of Ne Win. The small ray of hope ignited with the rise of Suu Kyi and the fall of Ne Win was quickly extinguished shortly after the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) stepped into the political scene in 1989 under the leadership of General Saw Maung, who effectively took control of the government from the BSPP. Rumors of elections drove Suu Kyi and the NLD to vigorously campaign across the country, hoping to solidify a democratic transition. When they were met with scathing attacks by multiple government-sponsored newspapers and journals, it became clear that the SLORC and the Tatmadaw had no intention of allowing the elections to be fair and free. In July 1989, the SLORC placed Suu Kyi under arrest and banned her from contesting the upcoming elections. In an effort to control the outcome of the elections, in the early 1990s the Tatmadaw orchestrated a string of forced relocations in at least five major cities including Rangoon and Mandalay, with upwards of 500,000 civilians involuntarily moved to satellite towns. To justify this coordinated maneuver, the state-sponsored Working People’s Daily newspaper insisted that these people were “squatters” living in slums, who were being offered an opportunity to move into a permanent, more developed area. International diplomats in the region at the time noted that the targeted neighborhoods were actually full of reinforced brick buildings with no real infrastructure problems. 14