Today is a special day. Outside in New York, the sun is shining, the birds are singing (literally) and I’m off to play a gig with my band in Washington Square Park. Couldn’t be more perfect.

However, that’s not why this day is special. It’s special because today is Aung San Suu Kyi’s 65th birthday. She will spend it under house arrest in Rangoon, as she has spent most of the last 14 years of her life. Last year, she received a cake from friends and shared it with her guards. This year, I’m sure she will do the same – embodying the spirit of peaceful protest, dialogue and reconciliation with a brutal junta who have oppressed the Burmese people since 1962.

So why do that when the generals have killed and pillaged your country for their own profit? Many people give up on peaceful opposition and become radicalised when it is not a quick, easy victory. But Daw Suu, like other Nobel Peace Laureates, believes that true peace and true change can only come from this path. As a Buddhist, she also does not believe in violence and warfare as an effective method of resistance. Something I also believe in, but admire all the more so in her because she has had to directly put that philosophy into practice and never waver. My choice is simple in comparison.

Daw Suu continues to be the only Nobel Peace Laureate who is imprisoned for her beliefs. The sham elections being held in Burma this year were specifically designed to block her and her party, the National League for Democracy, out – in fact they even changed the law so that the NLD had to officially disband as a political party or remove her from the leadership – and she will not be free to participate in any way. So as you go about your Saturday, send her a prayer, or a kind thought. She deserves a happy birthday as much as any of us.

If you want to help, please consider supporting a Burmese non-profit – in the UK, try the Burma Campaign UK, or in the US the US Campaign For Burma. Both do remarkable things with remarkably little.

Happy Birthday, Daw Suu!