- Aung San Suu Kyi is making her first visit to the United States in decades
- She expresses support for easing U.S. sanctions on Myanmar
- She is due to collect the Congressional Gold Medal she was originally awarded in 2008
- The visit is a reminder of the work still to be done in Myanmar, Hillary Clinton says
(CNN) -- Myanmar opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, a pro-democracy campaigner who was kept under house arrest for years by the country's military rulers, is due to receive the U.S. Congressional Gold Medal in Washington on Wednesday.
The honor is one of the highlights of a 17-day tour of the United States by Suu Kyi, who was freed in 2010 and elected to the Myanmar parliament this year, a historic moment in the incipient political reforms under way in the Southeast Asian nation.
Congress awarded the medal, its "highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions," to Suu Kyi in May 2008, but she has only now been able to make her first visit to the United States in decades to receive it.
She joins a list of recipients that includes George Washington, Nelson Mandela and Frank Sinatra.
Over the next two weeks, Suu Kyi is scheduled to meet with high-level American officials, as well as democratic activists.
At the start of her visit on Tuesday, Suu Kyi met with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and made an address at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington during which she said she supported the further easing of U.S. economic sanctions on Myanmar.
"I do not think we should depend on U.S. sanctions to keep up the momentum of our movement for democracy," she said. "We have got to work at it ourselves."
Under President Thein Sein, the Myanmar government has released hundreds of political prisoners in the past year, part of a series of reforms that have followed decades of repressive military rule. Western governments have responded to the efforts by starting to ease sanctions originally put in place to pressure the military regime.
Myanmar authorities have also engaged in peace talks with rebel ethnic groups and allowed Suu Kyi's party, the National League for Democracy, to successfully participate in by-elections for the national parliament in April.
Suu Kyi and others have nonetheless cautioned that progress toward greater freedoms in Myanmar, which is also known as Burma, remains embryonic and fragile.
"I think one of the important reasons for her visit at this time is to remind us of how much more still lies ahead, from strengthening the rule of law in democratic institutions to addressing the challenges in many of the ethnic conflicts and in Rakhine State," Clinton said Tuesday in an introduction to Suu Kyi's address.
Communal violence between Buddhists and Muslims in the western Myanmar state of Rakhine this summer killed scores of people and displaced thousands of others. Human rights advocates have accused the authorities of cracking down particularly harshly on the Rohingya, a stateless ethnic Muslim minority, during the unrest.
Suu Kyi's U.S. trip coincides with a visit to New York by Thein Sein to attend the U.N. General Assembly where he will meet with Clinton.
On Monday, the Myanmar government announced that it was releasing more than 500 prisoners as part of an amnesty. Suu Kyi said Tuesday that her party calculates that there were about 90 political prisoners among those released.
Between 200 and 400 political prisoners remain behind bars in Myanmar, according to different estimates.
Earlier this year, Suu Kyi visited Thailand, her first trip abroad since her release from house arrest, and then traveled to Europe, where she finally collected the Nobel Peace Prize she was awarded in 1991.
As part of her U.S. tour, she will visit Fort Wayne, Indiana, home to one of the United States' largest populations of Burmese expatriates. Since the early 1990s, about 5,000 Burmese have carved out a life there.
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