Burma’s longest serving political prisoner, the journalist and politician U Win Tin, was laid to rest this week in Rangoon after passing away on Monday at age 84. A journalist, editor, and founder of the opposition National League for Democracy, he was incarcerated for 19 years in Rangoon’s notorious Insein Prison where he was subjected to torture, mistreatment, and solitary confinement in a taik piek, which tellingly means “dog cell.”
For many years, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the United Nations made U Win Tin, one of Burma’s most prominent political prisoners, the focus of extensive campaigns. When he met with visiting dignitaries in Insein Prison, he spoke without fear of the deplorable prison conditions, the torture he suffered that severely affected his health, and having his prison sentence arbitrarily extended several times. He ultimately served 19 years in prison. U Win Tin’s profile and his courage played a critical role in prompting governments to exert pressure on the military junta then ruling the country, which obstinately denied that political prisoners were anything more than common criminals.
Upon his release in September 2008, he immediately resumed his public criticism of military rule and demanded the release of the estimated 2,100 political prisoners then being held, and started programs to support prisoners’ long-suffering families. He became the voice of the community of the more than 10,000 political prisoners held during military rule from 1962 to 2010. His powerful 2010 memoirs, “Whats That? A Human Hell,” described prison life as a “hellish whirlpool” in which prisoners “struggled, swimming upstream, downstream.”
U Win Tin always wore a blue prison shirt to remind people he was a former prisoner. He remained angry at the military authorities for his incarceration and ill-treatment of thousands of political activists, and demanded a public apology from previous military leaders. He was critical of the reformist government of President Thein Sein, and also criticized those who tried to ignore the military’s crimes of the past. As Burma struggles to find its way towards becoming a rights-respecting democracy, the uncompromising moral voice of U Win Tin, who so eloquently articulated the aspirations of generations of Burmese, will be sorely missed.
