Aung San Suu Kyi is free: Lancia has completed its mission

"Aung San Suu Kyi was released at 4:00 pm local time. Five hundred people have already gathered in front of her residence. She will meet with her people later in the day. Dear friends, we want to express our appreciation and gratitude for your earnest commitment. Yours was the only voice coming from the business world in support of a leader and her people who were forced to remain silent". With these words Bo Lha Tint, Burmese minister for foreign affairs of the government in exile, announced the release of Aung San Suu Kyi, Nobel Peace Laureate in 1991, and thanked Lancia for its crucial contribution towards making this dream come true.

The news came in while the eleventh edition of the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates was under way in Hiroshima, which Lancia is sponsoring for the third time in a row. And since the very first day the brand has fought for the release of the Burmese leader Aung San Suu Kyi side by side with these distinguished figures. This is the reason why an extraordinary and unique communications project was formed. For the first time in history a campaign has assembled the Nobel Laureates Mikhail Gorbachev, Frederik Willem De Klerk, Lech Walesa and Ingrid Betancourt, and this year the Dalai Lama decided to join the campaign announced by Lancia by donating his image.

The brand's commitment to the Burmese leader began in 2008 when an evocative commercial that aroused huge enthusiasm in the international community and amidst the mass media was presented in 2008 in Paris, on the occasion of the World Summit of Nobel Laureates, as was demonstrated by the prestigious Wall Street Journal. "Lancia was able to bring together the leaders of peace, in addition to the most prominent politicians of the western world, in an initiative without precedent over the last ten years of work carried out by the United Nations", emphasised the major daily.

The World Summit of Nobel Laureates was held the next year in Berlin on the occasion of the celebrations for the twenty-year anniversary of the fall of the wall. Once again Lancia made a film clip, again starring the Nobel Laureates, committed to giving a voice to the woman who for more than 20 years was forced to remain silent: Aung San Suu Kyi. The clip featured a wall that falls and turns into white doves. "It was a message of hope that interpreted the collective desire to bring down the wall of her prison through our values", continued Francois. "The brick wall in Burma and the wall of silence that too often suffocated the telling of her story".

"It is a concrete commitment in which Lancia again took a leading position this year, in its support of the World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates being held in Hiroshima", said Francois. "And the film clip prepared for the event has, with immense joy, been re-edited in the last few hours so that the end has a totally different flavour. Today the Burmese leader has been released. Today a great battle has been won and an Italian company can take immense pride in having contributed to the attainment of this goal, even if to a minor extent".

Turin, 13 November 2010