Michael Aris

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Michael Vaillancourt Aris (March 27, 1946, Havana, Cuba – March 27, 1999, Oxford) was an academic and lecturer in Asian history at St John's College and later at St Antony's College, Oxford.

After being educated at Worth School and upon completing his degree in modern history at Durham University in 1967, Aris spent six years as the private tutor of the children of the royal family of the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan.

In the early 1970s, Aris met Aung San Suu Kyi and the two married and settled to raise their two sons in a quiet life in North Oxford. In 1988 Suu Kyi returned to Burma at first to tend for her mother but later to lead the pro-democracy movement. St John's College provided Aris with an extended leave of absence as a fellow on full stipend so that he could lobby for his wife's cause.

In 1997, Aris was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The Burmese government would not grant him a visa to visit Burma, and Aung San Suu Kyi — at that time temporarily free from house arrest — was unwilling to leave the country, having been told by government officials that she would be refused re-entry if she left.