Date : 2006-03-09
By- Zin Linn
U Win Tin, former editor-in-chief of Hanthawaddy Newspaper and secretary of National League for Democracy Central Executive Committee, celebrates his 76 th birthday on March 12 in the notorious Insein Prison, where nearly 100 political activists died in recent years. He has been languishing in Special cell No.10 for the past 17 years. He is in poor health. Urethral infection led to prostate gland disorders; severe pain engulfs him while trying to urinate and bleeding when he defecates. Yet, this prominent Burmese writer, who co-founded National League for Democracy along Aung San Suu Kyi, has not asked for special treatment, not even special diet. He is putting up with the suffering in the torture chamber, stoically.
Back to 1996, I myself was thrown into solitary confinement in the infamous dog-cell No.2 of Insein Prison. At that time, Dr. Myint Naing (MP) was in the dog cell No.1, Dr. Zaw Myint Maung (MP) in the dog cell No.3, Myo Myint Nyein in No.4 cell, Dr. Khin Zaw Win in No.5, U Naing Naing (MP) in No.7, U Tun Win in No.8 and U Win Tin was in cell No.10. We were charged with a heinous crime. It was exposing the human rights abuses being indulged in by authorities. We smuggled that report to outside world and hence invited the Junta's wrath. By the time we checked into the prison, U Win Tin was unwell. He had undergone a hernia surgery and needed treatment regularly. He was denied a daily bath. He was denied a cup of water when thirsty. He is a man of steel and never shows a sign of depression. Like him, we were also denied facility for daily bath. Even drinking water whenever we felt thirsty. That is the Junta's decree and its minions at the prisons were happy to enforce with a vicarious thrill.
Why U Win Tin was arrested remains a mystery. He was picked up on 4 July 1989 for a crime he never committed. Three months later, on 3 October, he was pronounced guilty and awarded a jail term of three years with hard labor. Subsequently, the sentence was increased by 11- years in June 1992 and by 7 years in March 1996.
On his third trial, U Win Tin was charged with smuggling out of the prison anti-junta political review and a report on human rights abuses in Burmese prisons to Mr. Yozo Yokota, the then UN Special Rapporteur for Burma.
The only outside world outside the solitary prison cell for him is the prison hospital ward, which he frequents regularly. In the recent past, he had suffered two heart attacks; he underwent two operations and has begun to wear a surgical collar for spondylitis. Most of his teeth were lost and he has no hope of getting dentures. His eye-sight has become poor; but there is no hope of new spectacles from authority.
Nonetheless, U Win Tin remains unwavering in his commitment to his ideology. The Junta had told him directly and through intermediaries that he could hope to breathe freely if he could distance from NLD. At least publicly renounce his political beliefs and sign a letter of resignation from the NLD. He listens to his interlocutors, patiently and with a smile; but offers them no reply. The offer is repeated at least once a year by the military authorities. Every time it met with the same response.
U Win Tin was born on 12 March 1930. He is single; according to close friends, he is married to journalism. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English Literature, Modern History, and Political Science from Rangoon University in 1953. He made up his mind to become a journalist after reading Queed, a novel by Henry Sydnor Harrison (1880-1930). He was an assistant editor of the then Burma Translation Society between 1950 and 1954, and went on to be a consultant with the Djambartan publishing company of the Netherlands from 1954 to 1957. His credentials as an editor, and literary & art earned for him a place on the Burmese Encyclopaedia Publishing Board.
A widely travelled person he had brought out Kyemon (Mirror) Daily for eleven years (1957- 1968) as its executive editor. He moved to Mandalay in 1969 to join the Hanthawaddy Daily as its Editor-in-Chief. He was with the paper for nine years till it was closed down in 1978 for publishing critiques of mismanagement by local authorities and satirical cartoons.
The military authorities suspected a clandestine correspondence between U Win Tin and Aung San Suu Kyi when he was undergoing treatment in Rangoon General Hospital. They believe he had advised the Lady to launch a civil disobedience campaign.
U Win Tin was awarded UNESCO's World Press Freedom Prize for 2000 and World Association of Newspapers' Golden Pen of Freedom Award for 2001. Last year, 55 mayors of towns all over France have signed a Reporters Without Borders' (Reporters Sans Frontieres) petition calling for the immediate release of U Win Tin. French monthly, Maires de France, took the initiative for the petition. Amnesty International's London Office has also launched a petition campaign urging the ruling junta to release U Win Tin unconditionally.
Last year, journalists and dissidents outside the country had celebrated U Win Tin's Diamond Jubilee Birthday at the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand, in cooperation with Reporters sans Frontieres. Burma Media Association (BMA) brought out a special commemorative magazine to mark the occasion. The magazine featured as many as 11 articles written by U Win Tin himself and other anti-Junta journalists. In a message, Prof. Paulo S. Pinhero said: "Win Tin did not want to discuss his personal condition but wanted to discuss the human rights situation and the conditions of other political prisoners. Despite all the terrible constraints of prison, I must say that I found him very well informed and extremely lucid. He was very strong and remained committed to the cause of democracy, freedom of speech and the respect of human rights".
Aung San Suu Kyi describes U Win Tin as a man of courage and integrity. "He could not be intimidated into making false confessions. He is as clear as ever and his spirit is upright and unwavering".
Now Burma's junta is trying to deceive the International Community, especially the ASEAN, through an undemocratic seven-step roadmap. An undemocratic or pro-military roadmap will produce an authoritarian regime or a fake democracy mechanism controlled by the military council.
By detaining over 1300 political prisoners (including Aung San Suu Kyi, U Win Tin, U Tin Oo, Khun Tun Oo and 13 members of parliament), the military junta has turned a deaf ear to political dialogue and free press as well. Burma has no hope of changing into a genuine democratic federal union. Since December, the International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) has been prevented from visiting the prisoners, who, according to the report, are subject to ''torture and ill-treatment.'' Other allegations of human rights abuses in prison ''include food, water, sleep and light deprivation; harsh beatings; forced squatting for prolonged periods; shackling and solitary confinement.''
''No improvement; no improvement at all,'' Paulo Sergio Pinheiro (Special Rapporteur on the Situation of Human Rights in Myanmar) said on 24 February 2006 while addressing a press conference in Foreign Correspondents' Club of Thailand in Bangkok. ''The situation has deteriorated'', he declared and said his 29-page report on the plight of political prisoners will be presented to the U.N. Human Rights Commission in April 2006.
Burma's ruling military junta has announced several amnesties for political prisoners under pressure from the international community with the fond of hope of avoiding additional sanctions. U Win Tin's name has never figured in any of these lists. Last month, U Win Tin told his friend who visited him in prison not to worry about his release. "If the junta has a plan releasing political prisoners, I might be the last",' he reportedly remarked with a twinkle in his eye.
* Zin Linn: The author, a freelance Burmese journalist and ex-political prisoner, lives in exile. He is an executive member of the Burma Media Association, which is affiliated with the Paris-based Reporters Sans Frontiers.
- Asian Tribune -
http://www.mail-archive.com/zestmedia@yahoogroups.com/msg01198.html
No comments:
Post a Comment