Aung San Suu Kyi's Reith Lectures were secretly recorded in Burma and smuggled out of the country. After the first lecture was played to an audience at Broadcasting House in London, Ms Suu Kyi joined the audience's discussion via a satellite link from Burma.

Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi will make a rare appearance in Congress on Wednesday, testifying via video at a hearing in the House. The Nobel Peace Prize laureate spent years under house arrest by the military junta ruling Burma, also known as Myanmar. And so, when the invitation to testify came, she was reluctant to leave the country for fear that she would not be allowed back in.

Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmese democracy leader and Nobel peace prize winner, has issued a passionate manifesto for freedom in an unprecedented international broadcast describing the continuing 21-year-long struggle against Burma's military junta and the inspirational impact of the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions.

The recent release of Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest, after deeply flawed elections that allowed the military in Myanmar, also known as Burma, to tighten its half-century-long grip on the country, raises numerous political questions: What comes next for her? Will the ruling junta engage her newly reconstituted National Democracy Party? Will other political prisoners be freed?

It is possible that the generals knew that the election would cause such outrage that the only way to mask it was to present the world with a different and more compelling story, the release of the most famous political prisoner in the world.