Twenty-one years after she was first awarded it, Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi has finally received her Nobel Peace Prize.

Ms Suu Kyi spent much of the past two decades under political house arrest, before being finally released in 2010.

Introducing the democracy icon, the chairman of the Nobel Prize Committee, Thorbjorn Jagland, said the award stood for democracy and peaceful ethnic conciliation.

He said the Burmese opposition leader upheld those principles.

"It is you Aung San Suu Kyi who translated the committee's words into reality through your inspiring tenacity, sacrifice and firmness of principle," he said.

Ms Suu Kyi looked emotional as she received a thunderous standing ovation in the cavernous Oslo City Hall, packed with dignitaries, royals and Burmese exiles.

The Oxford University-educated daughter of General Aung San, Myanmar's assassinated independence hero, said that in 1991 the award made her feel part of the real world again at a time of intense isolation.

"The Nobel Peace Prize opened up a door in my heart," Ms Suu Kyi said.

"As the days and months went by and news of reactions to the award came over the airwaves, I began to understand the significance of the Nobel Prize.

"It had drawn me back into the wider human community. And what is more important, it had drawn the attention of the world to the struggle for democracy and human rights in Burma."

Loading...

The opposition leader, who spent a total of 15 years under house arrest between 1989 and her release in late 2010, never left Burma even during brief periods of freedom after 1989, afraid the military would not let back in.

Her sons, Kim and Alexander had accepted the Nobel prize on her behalf in 1991, with her husband Michael Aris also attending the ceremony.

A year later Ms Suu Kyi announced she would use the $1.3 million prize money to establish a health and education trust for Burmese people.

And she was unable to be with Mr Aris, an Oxford academic, when he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and died in Britain in 1999.

But despite the sweeping reforms that have accompanied her release, Ms Suu Kyi said that full political freedom in her country was still a long way off.

Although the government has signed ceasefires with scores of ethnic rebel groups, she pointed to continued bloodshed - conflict with the northern Kachin Independence Army and communal unrest between Buddhists and a Muslim minority.

"Absolute peace in our world is an unattainable goal," Ms Suu Kyi said in her acceptance speech.

"Hostilities have not ceased in the far north; to the west, communal violence resulting in arson and murder were taking place just several days before I started out the journey that has brought me here today."

Fifty people have been killed and scores wounded in the recent communal clashes in Rakhine state, state media said Saturday, as the United Nations warned of "immense hardship" faced by thousands displaced by rioting.

Ms Suu Kyi also advocated caution about transformation in Burma, whose quasi-civilian government continues to hold political prisoners.

"There still remain such prisoners in Burma. It is to be feared that because the best known detainees have been released, the remainder, the unknown ones, will be forgotten," she said.

Saying that "one prisoner of conscience is one too many", she urged the audience: "Please remember them and do whatever is possible to effect their earliest, unconditional release."

Thousands of people cheered for the Burma democracy icon after she received her prize ( AFP: Daniel Sannum Lauten )

Ms Suu Kyi thanked all "lovers of freedom and justice who contributed towards a global awareness of our situation", telling her Nobel audience it was "because of recent changes in my country that I am with you today".

She also thanked Norway - a tiny Nordic nation of just 5 million people - for its support and the instrumental role it played in Burma's transformation.

In 1990, the Bergen-based Rafto Foundation awarded its annual prize to Ms Suu Kyi, a little-known activist at the time, after a Norwegian aid worker in South-East Asia highlighted her work.

The award provided lasting publicity for her non-violent struggle against the country's military junta, putting her in the international spotlight and setting the stage a year later for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Norway has also provided a home to the Democratic Voice of Burma, an opposition television and radio outlet, which broadcasts uncensored news into Burma, in much the same way Radio Free Europe did behind the Iron Curtain decades earlier.

During her acceptance speech, Ms Suu Kyi skirted the issue of sectarian violence between Rakhine Buddhists and stateless Muslim Rohingyas, which has tested Burma's 15-month-old government.

"We hope ceasefire agreements will lead to political settlements founded on the aspirations of the people, and the spirit of union," she said.

The violence, which displaced 30,000 people and killed 29 by government accounts, stems from an entrenched, long-standing distrust of around 800,000 Muslim Rohingyas, who do not even hold citizenship, and much of Burma's public regards them as illegal immigrants.

The crisis has also put Burma's president Thein Sein in a tight spot. His government is under pressure from rights groups and Western countries to show compassion towards the Rohingyas but a policy shift risks angering the public.

Reuters