Myanmar: Freedom for U Win Tin after 19 years
Posted: September 23, 2008
U Win Tin, Myanmar's longest-serving prisoner of conscience, smiles after his release from Insein Prison in Yangon on September 23, 2008.
HLA HLA HTAY/AFP/Getty Images
After 19 years in prison, U Win Tin was released on September 23, 2008. He was the longest-serving prisoner of conscience in Myanmar.
U Win Tin is a 78-year-old journalist, prominent dissident and senior official in Myanmar's main opposition National League for Democracy (NLD) party, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.
Amnesty International issued an Urgent Action to its supporters about U Win Tin in July 2008. He had been in Yangon's Insein Prison, often in solitary confinement, for much of the past 19 years and had not received the medical treatment he needed.
U Win Tin was arrested on July 4, 1989, during a crackdown on opposition political party members. He was sentenced three times to a total of 21 years' imprisonment.
U Win Tin was most recently sentenced in March 1996 to an additional seven years' imprisonment for writing to the United Nations about prison conditions and for writing and circulating anti-government pamphlets/leaflets in prison. The authorities characterized this as “secretly publishing propaganda to incite riots in jail”.
While the authorities were investigating the writing of this letter, U Win Tin was held in a cell designed for military dogs, without bedding. He was deprived of food and water, and family visits, for long periods.
Six other prisoners of conscience were released at the same time as U Win Tin. They are are also NLD members and four are MPs-elect from the 1990 elections in which the NLD was victorious.
- Dr Daw May Win Myint, 58, an MP-elect, and Dr Than Nyein, also an MP-elect, 71, were imprisoned in 1997 for organizing an NLD meeting. Their original sentences had been repeatedly extended since 2004 and they suffer from poor health.
- Win Htein, 66, a senior assistant to NLD leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, was imprisoned in 1996 for, among other offences, organizing farmers and NLD members to collect agricultural statistics. He had been held in solitary confinement and suffers from numerous health problems, including hypertension and heart disease.
- Aung Soe Myint Oo, an NLD MP-elect, was sentenced in August 2003 to seven years, for “having a motorcycle without a license” but was widely believed to have been targeted for his political activities.
- U Khin Maung Swe, 66, an NLD MP-elect, was sentenced in August 1994 to seven years in prison.
- U Than Naing, a member of the NLD.
“The release of these seven political prisoners is most welcome. But this is not — and cannot be seen as — an end in itself, only the beginning,” said Benjamin Zawacki, Amnesty International's Myanmar researcher.
Amnesty International estimates that a further 2,100 political prisoners remain behind bars in Myanmar.